Check In & Tune Up: Assess Student Adjustment to Routines

Overview

Welcome to this Check It Thursday article for our Back To School Case Study Series.

• What: Count this as your how to guide towards understanding how to monitor and control the work you are executing for your master plan. Remember this applies to any class management project that focuses on Back To School planning. While we call this Check It Thursday, as part of our series, please adjust this to your schedule. Once you have your vision, you map it out with a plan of action, and you execute – its time to make sure everything is going according to plan!
• Where: You will use the downloadable resource and content in this article to complete the Check It Thursday step of the project management workflow process for all things class management/organization. In the long term, count this as another resource added to your project management toolbox!
• Why: We know that class management is often the hardest thing to deal with as an educator. The strategies you implement for one class may not work for another. This is where our free resources and project management strategies (adapted for classroom spaces) are here to help! With consistency, organization, and implementation of the project management practices we share, you’ll find class management to be much easier to wrangle!

Quick Summary

The first few weeks of school are full of transitions—for students and teachers alike. This is where valuable organization and project management skills really do help. So far, as part of our back-to-school series, we focused on the importance of defining a classroom mission, planning with purpose, and executing tasks (part of those project plans) with precision. Now we are going to focus on keeping the momentum going for any project that you are actively working on.

From a project management perspective: the tool we are discussing that you can add to your educator’s project management toolbox will be this Project Check-In Form. This form gives you a structured way to gather feedback on how students are adjusting to your classroom routines, expectations, and systems. Remember, we are treating these things as projects. Your classroom routine (e.g. giving students tasks each week to keep the classroom tidy) is a project! Your expectations can be turned into a full-fledged project that you can absolutely track and monitor over time! Even the systems you create in your classroom, like lesson planning, can be classified as a project.

By definition a project is something with a beginning and an end. It is your own personal endeavor to provide something – a product (e.g. worksheets, lessons, etc.), service (e.g. teaching!) or a result.

This is a simple tool that helps you make timely, responsive changes before small issues become big ones.

What You need

Product: Project Check In Form Template. This is presented in a clean, easy-to-use format. Here are your key highlights:

• Prompts for reflection on routines, comfort, and clarity (bonus: you can adapt this for yourself as a teacher OR share it with students to help foster taking time to evaluate the quality of work submitted and overall status in class)
• Space for teacher notes and follow-up actions
• Designed for early-stage feedback and adjustment

How to Use It

Option #1: If you have launched a project (e.g. your unit study is your project, your lesson plan is your project, some multi-day activity is your project, etc.) you will want to use this form after the project is running and tasks are being completed. This form will help you do an honest check in with how the project is flowing and whether you need to adjust.

 Option #2: As a more general approach, if you do not have a specific project, you planned or executed, use this form at the end of the first or second week of school to check in with students. You can distribute it as a written reflection, a digital form, or even use it as a discussion guide. The goal is to surface what’s working, what’s unclear, and how you can better support your students as they settle into the year.