Predictability: Environment & Structure
Overview
Maintaining consistent classroom routines and schedules ensures that students are able to trust and predict what will happen next. Predictability in the learning environment helps students feel secure because they know the expectations, freeing up their Working Memory so they can apply their cognitive skills to learning.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how this kindergarten class transitions from their desks to a line through an established routine. By transitioning with a repetitive rhythm, students know what is expected of them and show that a routine can be fun and effective.
Design It into Your Product
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Teacher Modeling & Support Strategies
Teachers can support language development by using and providing syntax that is appropriately leveled (e.g.
Teachers support language development by using and providing Vocabulary that is appropriately leveled (e.g., using word wall words).
Content that is provided in clear, short chunks can support students' Working Memory.
Building positive and trusting relationships with learners allows them to feel safe; a sense of belonging; and that their academic, cognitive, and social and emotional needs are supported.
Teaching students how to label, identify, and manage emotions helps them learn self-regulation skills.
Actively and authentically encouraging all students to seek support, ask questions, and advocate for what they believe in creates a safe space for risk-taking and skill development and supports a Sense of Belonging.
Teachers can help students understand that learning involves effort, mistakes, and reflection by teaching them about their malleable brain and modeling their own learning process.
Providing feedback that focuses on the process of developing skills conveys the importance of effort and motivates students to persist when learning.
By talking through their thinking at each step of a process, teachers can model what learning looks like.
Teachers sharing text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections models this schema building.
Reading aloud regularly exposes students to new and familiar vocabulary and texts.
Reading aloud books about skills children are learning provides another model for their development.
Providing students a voice in their learning is critical for making learning meaningful.
Wait time, or think time, of three or more seconds after posing a question increases how many students volunteer and the length and accuracy of their responses.
