I love metaphors and colloquial expressions.  I don’t know why, but they help… they “stick”…

Somewhere I heard the expression “early learning is like wet cement”, meaning routines and habits are easily established—good and bad—and then they harden.  When we groove good habits early, everything later is simpler. 

 When we permit bad habits early, they “harden”, and it much harder to unlearn, and relearn, bad patterns and routines than learn it right early on.

This is why we have to be so attentive to not only routines and procedures early on, but also classroom norms and expectations, in the first weeks and month of school.

Investing heavily in teaching students the “right way” from the “get go” relative to walking into a room, getting ready to learn, annotation of text, talking to partners, turning in materials, accessing the classroom library, will pay off enormously over time.  The same is true regarding effort, expectations, and standards. 

How we conduct ourselves in the first 4-6-8 weeks sets the tone.  

Constantly evaluate, and talk aloud with your class, about how you are doing regarding the routines, procedures, habits that are being established.