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[ sounds of children ]
The Responsive Classroom approach is founded on the belief that children do their best learning in a safe,
challenging, and joyful learning environment that's designed to meet their developmental needs.
The Responsive Classroom is not a separate curriculum,
but rather an approach to teaching that offers educators practices
that they use throughout the day to create positive classroom
and school communities where children engage fully in their learning.
In a Responsive Classroom, children learn how to respect each other,
and to work together as they learn. Using best practices refined over decades
The Responsive Classroom approach has transformed schools around the nation,
from the classroom, to the hallways, to playground.
I think Responsive Classroom has the capacity to really change a school culture
in that it can create and sustain a caring schoolwide community.
What we found with Responsive Classroom is that the students know
that the people in that building care about them and that they will help
them address issues as they arise. They know that teachers will listen
if they have a problem, so they are more available to learn.
How are you Pierre? Good Morning, Harry!
Well I know that Responsive Classroom works because I know that anybody performs to the fullest of their potential
when they're in a supportive, engaging environment where they matter.
It's a core component of everything that our school is about,
it enables us to foster classroom communities that support our students, it enables our students
to be independent, responsible, but also caring for each other.
It just has created a real sense of community across the school.
Responsive Classroom pays particular attention to the structure of the entire school day.
The first part of the day is especially important because it sets the tone for the entire day.
Responsive Classroom teachers begin the day with a Morning Meeting.
This simple but powerful routine builds community, teaches key social and academic skills,
and sets the tone for learning.
It's a time for teachers and students to calibrate their minds, and their emotions, to start the day fresh.
In the Morning Meeting circle, teachers integrate social skills with academic instruction.
Along with reading, writing, and math, children learn how to take turns,
listen to a classmate's ideas, assert their own, and disagree respectfully.
Teacher: It's a time for them to greet each other, get to know each other,
share, and get to know the routine of what's going to happen that day.
It changed the way that my kids interacted, it changed the way that my kids viewed themselves,
and it changed the way that my kids treated each other.
Teacher: The way I see it, is, my Morning Meeting time
sets my students on such a positive pace, that it takes out so many other issues througout the day.
Student: Morning Meeting is great because it's always fun, and there's something new.
Student: I like Morning Meeting because it helps me when I'm in a bad mood,
and I come to school and we just greet everybody and they make me feel good.
Student: We get to talk about our family, and we can say what we do at our house.
Administrator: Morning Meeting is teaching,
and it's teaching both academic and social skills.
The important thing about Morning Meeting, is it gives kids this sense of
"It mattered that I walked through the door today." "I feel welcome here, I belong to this community."
Morning Meeting can teach very specific social skills, like how to welcome others, how to be inclusive,
how to be kind, then you can practice social skills, and teach very specific language.
It gives them that opportunity to not only feel safe and secure,
but to also build the relationships and build community
by allowing students to feel engaged, feel like they have a purpose.
Morning meeting is central to the Responsive Classroom way,
but it is just the beginning.
A proactive approach to discipline all starts on the first day of school.
As any administrator will tell you, having a calm, safe school environment
where students show self-control and respect for others is essential for learning.
Responsive Classroom offers a positive and practical approach to discipline,
that when implemented system-wide, will significantly
reduce the time spent on punitive measures and increase the time spent on learning.
[ bell tone ]
Teacher: I see empty hands, eyes on me.
Okay First Grade,we are the going to put away all of our tools.
Carefully and safely put your bags in the basket and walk to sit in our easel spaces. You may begin.
During the first six weeks of school,
teachers not only establish clear expectations from day one, but they also involve
students in creating rules that connect to their learning goals.
We started the year where the kids made their hopes and goals,
and then from the goals, they thought about "How can we help each other be successful?"
When we do read to someone, there are a lot of steps that we've been practicing
let's take a minute, look at our class rules, that we created together . . .
thinking about "read to someone," what rules are we following?
Using a Responsive Classroom's rule creation process
helped us create the rules together, so the rules are in the student's language
they wrote them, and they feel ownership over those rules.
Teacher: What else? Timmy?
Student: Cooperate and be kind to others by saying yes, and not "I don't want to be your partner."
In addition, they begin the practice of firmly, but respectfully intervening
when behavior first begins to go off track, so that the focus always stays on learning.
We were stuggling with student behaviors, and being
much more reactive and punitive, and it just didn't feel right and we weren't getting the results,
so we felt like we were at a crossroads where we had to do something.
We knew that Responsive Classroom was working when we looked at our data
that showed us how many times teachers were asking for children
to be removed for behavioral supports, and we found that over time
that our schoolwide number of removals per day was going
from twelve to fifteen per day down to two or three.
Teacher: Stop! Remind me how can we use the swing safely?
Student: By swinging back and forth.
Teacher: Okay, go ahead and show me.
Teacher: There you go, okay, now you're swinging safely!
With the Responsive Classroom having logical consquences,
having them focus on fixing it,kept them engaged in the relationship with both the teacher and the students.
Do we go back and do more of the same we've
been doing for the last fifty years, which is the the punishment based?
Because if we've had that already, for this many years,
and it's not working, more of the same is only going to give you the same results.
Positive Teacher Language, one of the most powerful tools for instruction
is another central component of the Responsive Classroom approach.
It's all about our language.
When we teachers use language that names our positive vision for our work together,
then children buy into it, and share that positive vision.
Teacher: And today we're going to focus on thinking about how our classroom rules
will help guide us when we're looking for a partner.
We use language that lets children know what they're doing well
in a way that's respectful and non-manipulative.
Teacher: When you were reading and listening,
what did you notice about what our whole class was doing together?
Teacher: Kira?
Student: When it was yellow and brown, they were doing it like expressions.
Teacher: You noticed that?
Teacher: Common langage is very important to carry over from a home
classroom to a specialist room, because they're expected to do the same thing
everywhere they go, and so it's just easy for them to keep building on those skills.
As an art teacher, Responsive Classroom helps because it keeps
the language that I speak consistent with the other classroom teachers, it makes
my communication with the kids easier, because it's the same as their classroom teacher.
We have two minutes left. In two minutes we're going to clean up together.
For the next two minutes our voices will be on whisper.
In a Responsive Classroom, teachers strive to fully engage students in their learning each and every day.
The goal is for learning to be active, and interactive. One of the key strategies
teachers use to engage students, is to give them structured choices in their learning.
By giving them choice over either the product that
they create, or the topic that they pursue,
students are more likely to be engaged in their own education.
Teacher: Now you have three choices for the tools that you can use
to practice counting by twos. Let's look up at the board,
and I'll show you them to you.
You may chose the insects . . . you may chose the animals . . . you may chose the buttons.
So you're looking at a classroom that's studying the natural world around their school.
Some kids might be researching information on the internet, some kids might be
drawing sketches in notebooks, some kids might be making clay models of
animals that they've seen around the school.
That you would see kids engaged in a variety of different academic activities all at the same time.
I think it's a point for kids to learn how make their own choices
and they don't get to make a lot of their own choices, people tell them when to eat, when to do this,
so it gives them a choice to develop their own skills at things
they enjoy doing, and it makes it fun for them, so instead of me telling them
what to do, they feel better about what they're doing. So it gives them
responsibility — like they're responsible for making their own choice.
These are the essentials of a Responsive Classroom.
Parent: I'm involved in the PTA at the middle and at the high School,
and Responsive Classroom practices is reflected so much in the
children coming from elementary school, that the middle and the high school notice it.
They notice what school those kids have come from because they're empathetic
toward their classmates, and it just shows a real difference
when they get to the middle and the high school level.
Responsive Classroom is the key to our success,
both academically and socially. It's that piece that brings us all together,
and that makes a huge difference in who are children are, and who the adults are at our school.
It's a philosophy that you can just feel in this building. I would urge any principal,
who was thinking of a positive change in their school, to truly consider the Responsive Classroom.
When I meet on a superintendent's board, and grants are being written,
I'm right at the front of the line saying "And we need to build in funding for Responsive Classroom."
This is a program that teachers feel comfortable with from the beginning.
And I think that's critical, and I think that's the beauty of the program.
I've been doing curriculum instruction for a very long time,
it was the first time with a program of that nature that I saw that happen,
and I also hear it with school superindents —
they see the benefit, and they also see that it's money well spent.