Teaching Routines: 48 free-to-try cooperative structures and teaching techniques
Teaching · Teaching Routines
Teaching Routines
Forty-eight routines for the two halves of a lesson: how children talk to each other, and how you teach. Each one explains what it is, when it earns its place, and what goes wrong, then runs on the board when you want it to.
A reference bank first and a set of tools second. The point is that a teacher can look one up, understand it properly, and use it tomorrow, not just press a button.
Activities the children do. Each one is a sequence you start on the board and work through together, and every one of them gets every child speaking.
Things you do. Small, well-evidenced moves that change what a lesson is worth: what it is, what goes wrong, and one thing to try tomorrow. Most cost nothing but the decision.
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Teaching routines for the classroom, free to try
A teaching routine is a small, repeatable move that changes what a lesson is worth. Some are about how children talk to each other: structures that get every voice into the room instead of the same four hands. Some are about how you teach: how you explain, how you check, how you start. There are forty-eight here, and most of them cost nothing but the decision to use them. Browsing is free; putting a routine on the board or printing it uses one token, and coming back to that same routine is free.
The bank is meant to be read as much as used. A teacher who understands why cold calling works, or what goes wrong with a placemat, will run it better than one who follows the steps, so every routine will carry a proper explanation alongside the tool.
Each routine, explained in full
Think, Pair, Share: every child answers three times: alone, to one partner, then to the room. The silent minute is the technique.
Round Robin: the group goes round in order, one idea each. The turn is compulsory rather than offered, which is what stops three children doing all the talking.
Snowball: pairs become fours become eights, and every merge forces the group to drop something. Choosing what to lose is the thinking.
Four Corners: an opinion in each corner of the room and everybody has to stand somewhere, so nobody can quietly abstain.
Hot Seat: one child answers in role while the class questions them, so inference has to be spoken rather than looked up.
Fishbowl: an inner circle discusses while an outer circle watches how they do it. It is the only reliable way to teach discussion itself.
Diamond Nine: nine cards ranked into a diamond. The top and bottom take a minute; the middle is the whole activity.
Silent Card Sort: groups sort cards into categories without speaking, so no one child can narrate the sort.
Human Line-Up: the class orders itself along a line by how strongly it holds a view, which cannot be done without talking.
Expert Circles: each group masters one part, then regroups so everybody has to teach theirs.
Envoy: one person leaves each group to explain their answer elsewhere and brings a different one back.
Silent Debate: the whole argument happens in writing, so every child argues at once and you keep the record.
Talking Tokens: two tokens each, spent one at a time to speak. It rations the dominant and obliges the quiet.
Consensus Circle: everybody is heard once before anybody replies, then the group finds an answer all of them can live with.
Back & Forth: partners alternate rapid answers with no passing and no repeats. The quickest structure here.
Number Groups: the group works it out, then you call a number and that child answers for all of them.
Quiz & Swap: quiz a partner from your card, swap cards, find somebody new. Everybody is the expert for thirty seconds.
Explain & Record: one child thinks aloud while the other writes it down without interrupting, then they swap.
Stand Up, Share Up: stand, cross the room, and swap ideas with somebody who is not on your table.
Rotating Stations: groups move between tasks and have to add to what the last group left behind.
Pass the Problem: one step each, then pass it on, and check the step above before you add yours.
Give One, Get One: write your own ideas, then trade one for one round the room. You cannot trade what you have not got.
Two Stars and a Wish: two things that worked and one to change, given face to face rather than handed over.
Placemat activity: four corners and a middle; everybody writes alone before anybody talks.
Every routine here is described in our own words and named plainly. Where a technique has a known originator (Frank Lyman’s Think, Pair, Share, Elliot Aronson’s jigsaw grouping) they are credited on its page. Sage Teachers is independent and not affiliated with any publisher of classroom-practice materials.