Predictability: Environment & Structure
Overview
Maintaining consistent routines, structures, and supports 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. Consistency and predictability are especially important for students who do not experience such stability outside of school.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how this seventh grade teacher establishes routines and expectations during the first few days of school. By spending time describing and practicing procedures like passing papers, students learn how to transition efficiently. Going over the rules and expectations also allows students know what is expected of them and how to be successful.
Design It into Your Product
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Teacher Modeling & Support Strategies
Using language that is accessible and appropriately leveled for each student allows all students to feel successful and participate in learning.
Content that is provided in clear, short chunks can support students' Working Memory and ensure students are directing their Attention to the relevant information.
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.
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.
Teaching students how to systematically evaluate sources prepares them to navigate in an increasingly complex, digital world.
Providing constructive feedback supports students' writing development by letting them know how to improve their writing.
+When students are aware that learning involves effort, mistakes, reflection, and refinement of strategies, they are more resilient when they struggle.
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.
Reading aloud to adolescents models Reading Fluency as texts become more complex and disciplinary in nature and therefore, more difficult to understand.
Using texts to discuss complex emotions and perspectives with students can help them see how they influence behavior and draw their own personal connections.
Giving students voice and choice in their learning is critical for making learning meaningful and relevant to them, an important aspect of promoting Sense of Belonging.
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.
