Most classroom that I have been in have various ways of doing tasks or ways that they run whether it is elementary, middle, high school or college classrooms. Teachers typically do this so that students know what is expected of them and they give students a strong sense of stability and structure. This type of reasoning is also seen in the realm of manufacturing which relies in processes and procedures to keep production moving smoothly.  In this vein of thinking classrooms can benefit from manufacturing and develop standard operating procedures for completing common tasks such as starting and ending class, switching from one task to another, taking notes or giving a demonstration. I think that elementary teachers utilize standard procedures for quite a bit of tasks already. They typically have processes for students to wash hands, follow each other in a line and other common skills that very young students need to learn. However with older students we take for granted that they know how to do tasks and having common methods for how our classrooms work benefits both the teachers and the students. Additionally as teachers of older students, we will often get students switched into our classes during the semester which is where having these procedures written down and easily accessible for students becomes very valuable. New students can learn procedures as they need them or general students can refresh themselves of the procedures as needed. This is where writing SOP (standard operating procedures) and having them on a class website becomes very useful. While there is an upfront cost of writing and creating SOPs for common tasks for the teacher this can also become a very valuable technical writing project.

What is an SOP?

Standards Operating Procedures or SOP can be any process or procedure that you use in your classroom or lab space. We all have these processes and procedures in our classrooms, they are often unwritten, verbally explained or demonstrated to students. SOPs don’t need to have a lot of information or be very complex, they need to have a few basic components. Starting with a stated purpose, this is the reason for the SOP existing. Next you will need to have some common formats, these can be step-by-step, hierarchical or diagrammed are some of the most common for classrooms. Keep in mind when creating your SOPs to keep them in formats that are appropriate for your students and their grade level. Finally, they need to have the information related to the process or procedure that you are documenting.

How do SOP foster independence in the Classroom?

When we write processes and procedures down and build a collection of them we build a resource where students can look them up as needed. This allows students to have a resource that they can look to when they need to be reminded of how tasks or jobs or processes should be accomplished. Students can go look through a binder or access a digital version on their when they are stuck which then gives the students a path out of the problem that they are facing. When a student is stuck on a process or procedure and they don’t know how to find the answer, they can go to the SOPs to find the process or procedure that they are working on and find a guide on how to proceed. This gives them a path forward and out of the problem that they are facing. This can be done with the teachers help or on their own, if they have questions with SOP they can bring specific questions to the teacher which helps to build communication skills.

Writing an SOP

Writing an SOP can seem like a very big process, but it can be be broken down into four steps: 1) Defining the purpose of the SOP, 2) Gathering the information for the SOP, this can be the steps, background knowledge and imagery if needed, 3) The processes steps and finally 4) Review. In the first step, we define the purpose of the process or procedure. We will also define any reasons that this process or procedure is needed and/or should be used. In the second step we will gather and put together all of the information that will be needed for the SOP, this can be thought of as a draft writing process. I will use this step to start to put together a draft of the SOP and look for any places where I have missed information and have holes to fill in the information. I will also use this process to begin to organize the information into a logic process if that is need, for example for new processes and procedures that I am not totally familiar with. Finally, we will get to the actual writing process, this can be blurred into the previous step, but you may want to discreetly do these steps separately. As you learn to write your SOPs and get a feel for how you prefer to write them this will become easier and you will be able to form your own process for it. Finally, we come to the review step and in this step, I like to find two or three people who are unfamiliar with the process or procedure that I have just written the SOP for and give them the SOP and ask them to try it out and “field test” it and ask them to annotate any questions or misleading steps. I will then take this information and go back and fix any issues that may have arisen from the field test. When I am done and have my SOP written, I may go back and clean up formatting and make sure the SOP follows and looks like the other SOPs that I have already written in order to maintain clarity and familiarity with the documents and overall collection.

Download our SOP Template (Microsoft Word)