Establish Routines and Procedures (Marzano DQ:4)

One of my biggest takeaways from the Marzano professional developments I've been through over the last several years are the concepts of 1) finding the right activities or strategies for your specific learning target, and 2) eliminating as many barriers as possible between students and learning.  Marzano DQ 4 is directly tied to the second thing.  Routines and procedures allow people to do things automatically.  If students don't need to think about how to learn, they can focus more energy on how ​they learn. 

I really emphasize procedures in my classroom.  One of the first days of school is devoted to generating class norms that will be used all year (in fact, this year my entire team of teachers will be using the norms my classes create).  Norms are things we do in class; that's what makes them different from rules - rules are things you do not do.  I also use the activity as an early opportunity for my students to practice the skills of individual brainstorming, small group collaborating, and whole class discussion all in just one lesson that also produces something we use and review every single day in class!

So, if you are interested in my FREE Google Slides based Norm Creation Activity that gets your students interacting and provides you with norms that your students have created and bought in to, click the link below.  And don't forget to visit and follow my store for other great World History and American History resources!

• Norm Creation Activity
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