Responsive Classroom

Responsive Classroom

Information gathered from www.responsiveclassroom.org

The Responsive Classroom is an approach to elementary teaching that emphasizes social, academic, and emotional growth in a strong and safe school community. The goal is to enable optimal student learning. Created by classroom teachers and backed by evidence from independent research, the Responsive Classroom approach is based on the premise that children learn best when they have both academic and social emotional skills. The approach therefore consists of classroom and schoolwide practices for deliberately helping children build academic and social-emotional competencies.

Guiding Principles

Seven principles, informed by the work of educational theorists and the experiences of exemplary classroom teachers, guide the Responsive Classroom approach: 

• The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
   
• How children learn is as important as what they learn: Process and content go hand in hand.
   
• The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
   
• To be successful academically and socially, children need a set of social skills: cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.
   
• Knowing the children we teach-individually, culturally, and developmentally-is as important as knowing the content we teach.
   
• Knowing the families of the children we teach and working with them as partners is essential to children's education.
   

• How the adults at school work together is as important as their individual competence: Lasting change begins with the adult community.

Since 1981, thousands of classroom teachers and hundreds of schools and school districts have used the Responsive Classroom approach to help create learning environments where children thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. In urban, rural, and suburban settings nationwide, educators using Responsive Classroom practices report increases in student learning, motivation, and responsibility, and decreases in problem behaviors.

Classroom Practices

At the heart of the Responsive Classroom approach are ten classroom practices:

Morning Meeting - gathering as a whole class each morning to greet one another, share news, and warm up for the day ahead

Rule Creation - helping students create classroom rules to ensure an environment that allows all class members to meet their learning goals

Interactive Modeling - teaching children to notice and internalize expected behaviors through a unique modeling technique

Positive Teacher Language - using words and tone as a tool to promote children's active learning, sense of community, and self-discipline

Logical Consequences - responding to misbehavior in a way that allows children to fix and learn from their mistakes while preserving their dignity

Guided Discovery - introducing classroom materials using a format that encourages independence, creativity, and responsibility

Academic Choice - increasing student learning by allowing students teacher-structured choices in their work

Classroom Organization - setting up the physical room in ways that encourage students' independence, cooperation, and productivity

Working with Families - creating avenues for hearing parents' insights and helping them understand the school's teaching approaches

Collaborative Problem Solving - using conferencing, role playing, and other strategies to resolve problems with students

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