Rules to Live By

Part of our school's Responsive Classroom philosophy involves creating classroom rules. Basically the theory behind this is if children take part in creating the rules they will be more vested in following them. So we started brainstorming today and as they fired off rules, I wrote them down. Here's our list...

My favorites are

• No Kissing 
• No stepping out of line. (Literally and figuratively!!)
• No touching bees (because those suckers can hurt)
• No beating up (especially the teacher)
• Don't wet the floor 
• No pulling wires on computers 
  

After we brainstormed we looked at our rules and categorized them. Our first category? Rules about Hurting. We turned those into one rule and called it the No Hurting Rule, which then became something positive...Be Nice to Each Other. Now isn't that what it's all about? I may just send our list to our presidential candidates.