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Our classroom rules

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Creating our classroom rules was an essential component of our first week at SummerPrep. On our second day of classes, the Daring Dragonflies gathered on the rug to talk about some hopes and dreams that we had for the next three weeks. Students then created their own “quilt squares” with a sentence or two about what they hoped to do at SummerPrep. They also drew a picture of themselves doing their hope or dream. This activity helped my teaching partner and I to learn a bit more about our students’ interests and favorite school activities, which was helpful in developing relationships with our students. We also learned a bit about our students’ writing styles and abilities, which helped us to plan our writing unit.

 

The second step in our classroom rules process was the discussion of the rules during morning meeting. I boiled down the class hopes and dreams into three key rules, which we talked about at morning meeting. We decided that it was best for the teachers to create the final list of classroom rules in advance because our students were still learning what school means, but we made it very clear to students that the rules came directly from the hopes and dreams they had shared the day before. For sharing time at morning meeting on our third day, each student shared their favorite rule or an example of how we can be good classroom citizens.

 

This was one of my favorite sharing activities from the entire summer because all of the Dragonflies were very engaged and excited to embody our class rules during the discussion. This activity helped even our quietest students to feel like they had a voice in our classroom and in the way that we treated one another. We referred back to these rules constantly throughout the rest of SummerPrep. I think the students could have used a stronger guide for what these rules might look like in class however, because as rising first graders school is still a relatively new experience for them. I am glad that we took the time to co-create these rules and in future classrooms I will definitely spend more time reviewing what our class rules might look like and sound like for my students.

 

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