The class wrties the rules; however I guide them to the rules that I am looking for. They are"
1. Raise your hand.
2. Keep your hands and feet to yourself.
3. Walk.
4. Treat people the way that you would like to be treated.
5. Follow directions.
These are the basic rules I illustrate on the top of my white board, they stay up all year and I point to them when I need to remind my students.
Mouths closed, pic of a student with closed mouth
raise hand for talking, pic of a raised hand
seat in the seat, pic of an arrow pointing to the seat (pointing down )
sunshine, use 'sunny words' I explain what words are 'sunny' and which are 'cloudy' and how they make us feel etc.
I try to keep my rules very simple and ENFORCE them without alot of nagging or reminding.
I keep it very, very simple. I tell my students the first day that I have only 2 rules: Respect and Cooperate. The Respect, of course, is for the principal, all the teachers, their classmates, and property. The Cooperate helps cover attitude. I spend some time talking about these being the basis of most of our manners, and I go back to these 2 basic words whenever "situations" arise. Works for me!
I teach 7th and 8th grade inner city. My rules are very concrete and simple for the kids.
1. Follow directions.
2. Raise hand to speak.
3. Stay in your seat.
4. Speak appropriately to adults and peers.
a. No profanity.
b. Use only given name. (Ex. Sam, not Dogg)
c. No name calling or teasing.
d. No verbal abuse or threats to anyone.
e. Never talk back to the teacher! Bite your
tongue first.
f. Speak Standard English in school.
5. Behave Appropriately
a. Keep your hands and feet to yourself.
b. No flying objects.
c. No physical or verbal disruption.
6. Absolutely no bullying behavior is tolerated.
a. No physical, verbal, sexual harrassment.
b. No hurtful teasing, gossip or isolation.
c. Everyone in this class has the right to
feel safe.
*(Name calling is the worst at this age. Yuck!)
CONSEQUENCES
1. Warning
2. Writing assignment
3. Lunch Detention/Call Parents
4. Thursday afterschool det. 2 hours
5. Pink card office referral
Those are not necessarily in that order. I keep my cell phone in class, and if a kid says "my mom won't care that is exactly what I tell the parent. Ususally the kid gets a new rear end reamed in front of everyone, because the parent is so ticked that the kid said that. I only have to call about one or two parents in class and the kids straighten up quickly. The important thing is following through with what you say. Most of the time I don't even raise my voice, because the kids must learn that they are responsible for their own actions. All choices have concequences. Good luck. This has worked for me for the past 15 years. It took 3 years to fine tune it, and every other year to work hard at being consistent. That is the hardest part for me.
Laura
Hi,
I teach 1st grade in an urban school. Here are my rules:
Follow directions the first time given
Keep body parts, objects and unkind words to yourself
Be in the proper place at the proper time
Use materials and equipment properly
Always walk in the building
I spend a great deal of time the first month of school discussing and reviewing the rules. We do lots of role playing.
Joell
these are the rules i use for my third graders.
above all: treat others the way you want to be treated
1. follow directions the first time given
2. raise your hand and wait for permission to talk
3. do not leave seat while the teacher is teaching
4. hands, feet, and objects to yourself
5. respect yourself and others
hope this helps!
I use these in my room. You used to be able to get them through the Really Good Stuff catalogue but I'm not sure if they are still available. My team teacher just wrote them on sentence strip with notepad bees stapled to each end. I teach kindergarten and these are the rules I use.
1. Bee a good listener
2. Bee responsible
3. Bee in control
4. Bee cooperative
5. Bee your best.
Hope this helps
I am a new 3rd grade teacher also. Our school has adopted rules to make it consistent wherever the students are. Maybe you could use these:
1. Be Responsible
2. Be Respectful
3. Be Safe
It keeps it simple. Then just model what these rules look like. I hope this helps.
I have 5 classroom rules:
1. Be responsible.
2. Be respectful of others and their property.
3. Listen carefully and follow directions.
4. Have a positive attitude.
5. Do your best.
Rule #1 encompasses a lot of things, and we discuss this on the first day. Almost any behavior will fall under one of these rules.
I teach first grade and my friends and I created color coded rules. There are six of them.
red rule: Pay attention. Listen carefully
white rule: Raise your hand.
Pink rule: Stay on task.
Yellow rule: Keep hands and objects to yourself.
Green rule; Clean up your area.
orange rule: Be kind and show respect.
Some years I have let the children makes suggestions as to the consequences. Other years, it depends greatly on the children. Writing the rule sometimes works, other time it might take taking something away from the child--recess time (1 minute per # of times child was warned).
At my school we do ITI, so the entire school has the same set of classroom rules. The "rules" are called lifelong guidelines. They are:
Lifelong Guidelines
Be Trustworthy
Be Truthful
Do Your Personal Best
Show Active Listening
No Put-Downs
If you think about it, almost every situation that comes up falls under one of these guidelines. I didn't like the idea when I first moved to this school, but I truly love it and have had the least number of discipline problems ever.
1. Be respectful to everyone at all times.
2. Keep hands, feet, and all other objects to yourself.
3. Raise your hand to speak.
4. Be prepared.
5. Arrive on time.
I know that #5 seems a little tough (since it is their parents responsibility to get them to school on time - I teach 4th grade), but that rule is for those that hang out in the cafeteria or in the halls in the morning socializing too long.
I have known a teacher that uses one rule and finds it extremely effective:
Discipline yourself so I don't have to.
She discusses what it means with her students on the first day and has never had any problems. I might try that this year.
Mine are listed here - with the consequences:
(where there is a blank, it's supposed to be a smiley face, then straight face, then frowny face - I have to draw those in).
