Great Expectations!
Co-Constructing Classroom Rules to Build Community (Virtual Tour)
Stage of Literacy Development:
Stage 2: Consolidation / FluencyStage 3: Literacy for Growth
Ages:
7-12
Grade Range:
2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6thFood Groups:
Primary: Classroom Tips Secondary: Motivation for Literacy
Transcript
These are our classroom expectations. We develop these collaboratively at the beginning of the school year as part of our community building activities. So within the first couple days of school, I give the students 4 different colored sticky notes and I ask them what they believe will help make our classroom a positive, productive, and enjoyable place to be. Once they've come up with 4 specific examples of how they believe our classroom will be fun and positive, they read them out loud and as they read them out loud, we stick them on the board. Now what we notice is when they're reading them out loud, there are similarities between some of the expectations so I ask the students to help me group them into different general groupings. Once we have all the sticky notes on the board, I draw a big circle around the similar examples and I ask the students to summarize all of those examples and to develop an expectation for the classroom based on that. One example would be that students should listen when the teacher is giving instruction and the students should listen to each other when they're talking, and this is summarized as attentive listening. Once we've done this for expectations of students in the classroom, I then ask them to write down 4 specific examples of what they expect of me throughout the year and we do the same activity. So they read the examples out loud, we group them together on the board, and then we summarize them into the expectations they have of me. So these act as contracts throughout the year and the sticky notes stay on the expectation charts, they serve as reminders of specific examples of how to be an attentive listener, how to be kind, and how to show mutual respect within the classroom.
Related References
Activity Objective
The goal of Great Expectations!: Co-Constructing Classroom Rules to Build Community (Virtual Tour) is to develop a clear plan with students to make the classroom a positive, fun, productive, and enjoyable place for everyone. At the beginning of the year, the teacher asks students to write examples of what they believe will help make the classroom fun and positive on to sticky notes. As they read them out loud, they stick them on the board and arrange them into groups in order to create consistent and clear expectations for all. This teacher also asks students to create expectations for the teacher in order to foster mutual respect.
Quick Tips
Additional Comments:
- You can adapt this activity to younger students by asking them to post sticky notes under pictures of what they believe is important class behavior. - It's important to review the expectations at least once a week at the beginning of the year to keep students on track, especially with younger students. - Try not to have too many expectations in order to maintain clarity.
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