Why should teachers bother?
A lot of English language teachers, particularly I think, less experienced teachers, are often wary of teaching younger learners as they find the classes "difficult to control" and "all songs with no content" (for absolute clarity, not my own opinions!). Personally, I love teaching lower-stage young learner groups, but can appreciate that they are not always everyone's cup of tea and that keeping learners engaged can sometimes be challenging in these groups.
With this in mind, I strongly believe that routines can make or break a young learner group. A lack of routine can make some students feel insecure which can in turn lead to a lack of participation, disruptive behaviour or even stress and anxiety about learning English. A lack of routines also means the teacher has to plan an entirely new lesson from scratch for each class taught, whereas the teacher who makes use of routines simply has to adjust their running lesson plan, add a couple of activities specific to that day's lesson aims and voilà, a new lesson plan is created in minutes. Yes, minutes.
Benefits for the young learners
A lesson plan built around familiar routines helps young learners feel safe and secure in the knowledge that they know what's coming next, and understand what is expected of them in each stage of the lesson. Participation levels increase and behaviour improves as students are motivated to work through the familiar activities they do in every class - asking a 6 year old to remain focused for an hour with no end in sight can be a challenge - but when children can mentally (or visually if you use a visual timetable - another great tool in the YL classroom) tick off the stages of the lesson, they can gadge how much of the class is left and which activities they have yet to complete before home time. Routines also help your YLs to become more autonomous and self-sufficient; if they know what's coming they can prepare for it and even lead stages of the lesson as "mini-teachers".
My reflections
I recently found myself between work contracts and had the perfect opportunity to reflect on the routines I had been using in my YL groups, and any possible changes or adjustments I wanted to make before starting in my new role.
Routines, while ideally implemented at the start of a new course, can be introduced or adapted at any time during the academic year. The only factor that's really key is that they are used consistently and changes are introduced slowly so that learners can adapt to an ever-changing repertoire of regular activities, while still feeling confident that they know what is coming.
I took to LinkedIn to ask colleagues about the opening classroom routines they use and found that we have a lot of key activities in common:
1 The welcome routine
Yes, a routine within a routine. By a welcome routine I generally refer to things like:
a welcome song (for the younger YLs)
assign the designated teacher's helpers, for example: the register taker, the stationary wizard, the homework checker, the goodbye teacher... The bigger your class, the more roles you may want to introduce so that all learners feel involved
introduce your reward system (if you use one)
take the register
elicit the date/weather
review/drill useful classroom language (questions like: How do you say X in English?, Can I speak in [Ss' L1], please? etc)
2 A review of previously seen content
Reviewing and recycling is important for all language learners. For YLs this stage could consist of:
a student-led question session (for very young YLs I normally take advantage of some 'circle time' sitting on the floor and we ask questions around the circle as a chain, for older YLs I usually board some questions which they then ask and answer in pairs) - however this is handled it's a good opportunity to get students out of their chairs and moving around
a quick pronunciation activity (this could be a tongue twister, drilling a set of vocabulary on the board, etc)
a game to review previously seen language
3 Homework correction/spot tests
if homework was set, check it in your opening routine before you launch into the new content - this way you can see if it's an area your students need more practise with before moving on to the lesson's content
spot tests can be motivating if handled correctly - I periodically give my students a short list of vocabulary or phrases we've seen in class for them to study at home and then we have a quick spelling/dictation spot test in class to see how much we can correctly write
My opening routines normally take up about 1/3 to 1/2 of my total lesson time, depending on how much time is spent reviewing previous language and checking homework tasks. Yet, none of the individual stages are ever longer than about 5 minutes. Despite the dynamic pace, since it's a familiar routine my students know what's coming next, feel confident that they know how to complete an activity correctly even though the target language is constantly changing and they do a great job of moving us through the different stages without too much teacher interference. All of which makes for a more efficient use of class time, a group that feels confident and comfortable (and therefore we encounter fewer classroom management issues) and greatly reduces the time I spend planning each lesson.
If you're not already a big fan of opening routines - I'd encourage you to give them a go!
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