Create age-appropriate classroom norms. Collaboratively establishing norms (instead of rules) encourages student agency and ownership. It also creates a safe learning space and helps to build classroom community.
Having said, that, it is more difficult to set norms collaboratively with very young children – they need guidance to think of all the important things and categorize them to make it simple.
Feel free to use the visuals below as you work together to build your classroom norms. You can work backwards moving from specific norms to rights and responsibilities, in this sequence:
- Specific Norms (“I can…”)
- Students Responsibilities (“I will…”)
- Student Rights (“I like to…”)
Or you can start with big ideas, working with how students want to feel in their classroom space and then work forward to what that will look like.
- Student Rights (“I like to…”)
- Students Responsibilities (“I will…”)
- Specific Norms (“I can…”)
Of course, whenever possible, I would encourage you to have the children illustrate norms posters or cues.
Once you have the general classroom norms established, you can create more specific norms for subjects or routines such as class discussions.
Watch this example from Creating Classroom Rules (Responsive Classroom) to see collaboration in action. Click the image below to download Norms Visuals PDFs – black and white or colour.
