We the Peeps of the Classroom...

So begins our classroom constitution... "We the peeps of the classroom..." Setting up a functional classroom is such a challenge and classroom rules are a big part of what makes a classroom successful (or disastrous). I wish I knew more how to do this as a first year teacher because my first year was... rough. Mostly because I didn't know how to set up the classroom. I could manage one just fine during student teaching, but starting with a bunch of blank-slates staring at me was overwhelming to say the least.

Day 1

As part of my state's Social Studies curriculum, the 5th grade has a large focus on the United States Constitution, its purposes, and its parts. So, three years ago I started setting up my classroom rules into a "Constitution" and integrating a lot of my Social Studies content. It takes about three weeks in all (but I was out for a three day training in the midst of that) which seems like a long time, but we always had a "draft" form of our rules to guide our behavior and the student "buy in" is phenomenal. I'm going to break it down into little pieces so you can see how this all grew into our full constitution we have today.

Day 1: In our Morning Meeting we had a discussion about our hopes and dreams for the fifth grade. What do you hope to accomplish? How do you want this year to be different? We did a think-pair-share where each student had to come up with an academic goal and a non-academic goal for this year. Once we had all shared we summarized what we heard on to our list.

Days 2/3

Days 2/3: Again in Morning Meeting, we discussed how we could help each other accomplish these goals through our actions. We tried to keep it all framed in the positives because it would be very easy to get negative (and also to go off on rabbit trails). "Don't spit." "Don't kick" "Don't Punch." is well covered in "Be in control and think about your actions."

The next day we took a look at our rules and tried to see if any of them related to each other. The students color coded them by how they saw the relationships. In the picture you can see that all of the "Be nice..." theme rules were colored in orange. This list served as our rules until our official copy was made. These eventually became our "Articles" in the Constitution.

Day 4/5: Morning Meeting/Social Studies

We started studying the Preamble to the Constitution. We did many things, but one of things that I think was most useful was breaking the Preamble down line by line and examining what it means. We used prior knowledge,  dictionaries, and thesauruses to figure out all those fancy vocabulary words to finally get down to the "nitty-gritty" of why the Constitution was written. We put this in our Government Lapbook that we are building together.


Day 6: Students write a preamble for our own Constitution. They had to think about why we need rules and how they help us accomplish our goals. They worked in teams to break it down for themselves and I encouraged to make it in their own language. The teams then displayed their preambles and students went around with post-it notes making comments about which parts they liked from each preamble. Then together, we picked the best of each one and made a combined preamble. This is ours...

Day 7-12: We begin our study of The Bill of Rights. There are many things that we do to study Amendments 1-10, but my favorite is to do the hand motions while we learn them. You can see them HERE. I've added some and changed a few (because it doesn't address all of them), but essentially they are the same.

Another of  my favorite things to do is assign each student an amendment (or a part of an amendment such as 'freedom of speech') and have them create a poster that contains three things. First, the poster must state the right that the amendment is protecting, then the remaining 

two are to be drawings. One drawing shows what life is like with the amendment in action. The second drawing shows what life would be like without the amendment. I'm very clear that I accept stick figures, but they must be stick figures in very clear and detailed situations  These usually end up more in comic form which is great. Then we do a museum walk to enjoy our classmates work. 

Museum Walk

Days 13/14: We bring it all together at Morning Meeting as soon as we finish the Bill of Rights and we wrote down our inalienable rights that we have in the classroom. This year's class was not as easily led by me as last year's class was so there were a few that I had to just about give them, but they still think they came up with it, so I'm pleased. We added it to our constitution. The following day we all voted to ratify the Constitution and signed it into law. 

They are so proud of the Constitution and will talk about it with anyone who visits our class. It's been great for management too. The students have really bought in to the whole concept and have been referencing it when students are making bad choices. Hopefully this continues, but I'm thinking this is going to be a great year! 

Our complete (and massive) constitution! 

Welcome to the 2012-2013 School Year!

Hello friends!!

I'm back in the swing of things and I'm really looking forward to an exciting year of teaching and learning both in my classroom and on my blog! Thank you to those that started following me over the summer break. I'm sorry if I didn't get back to you on a post or comment, but with a year-round calendar when I'm out for summer, I'm O-U-T! We've been back in session since July 9th! When I worked at a traditional school I'd always look on-line for ideas (before the days of Pinterest) and then start heading in to my classroom a week or two before the kiddos showed up. Well, my summer break was a whopping THREE weeks in all this year and I was going to enjoy every. last. minute. of it!!

Go up or down. It's up to you!

First, I'll show off some of the things that I've made and I really have LOVED using so far this year. I, of course, found this classroom management idea on Pinterest and had to make it a bit of my own.  The premise is simple, move up for good behavior and down for bad. The reason I like this better than those that only have down as an option, don't really highlight those students that go above and beyond each and every day. I've learned that I need to do a better job of pointing it out when I notice students that are being kind and compassionate, respectful and responsible, and doing what is supposed to be done not just because they're in danger of getting a yellow, but because it's become part of their nature. Those are the kids that I feel get left out of the other systems.

If you work your way up to "Role Model" you get one of these cards that I had made at (of course) VistaPrint! I love them. The language on the back comes straight from our school's Responsive Classroom character traits.

Students return their signed cards
to the Role Model jar

Students have parents sign the back and return it to the "Role Model" bin. At the end of the month I'll pull three cards and those students will get a bonus treat (homework pass, lunch with friend, etc). 
Also, if you get to "Role Model" ten times you can upgrade your clip. Of course I had to paint mine with sparkly paint to make them special! They work their way up to a gold clip (the gold looks silver in the picture).

The language on the sign is intentional as well. I didn't want to put the consequences on the lower levels because I really want to leave that up to my professional judgment. If someone has gotten to a yellow every day this week I might call home (even if that isn't listed until the red level), or if it's someone's first offence for the day and it's violent or wildly unacceptable I want to be able to send them to the office or have a more serious consequence without feeling like a hypocrite to those other students that had a different consequence come their way. I try to be fair (as we all do), I just liked this better... but that's just me. For the most part yellow is warning, orange is partial loss of recess and a conduct slip, and red is a parent phone call or office referral. 

I'm really excited to share with you more of what I've been up to in my classroom for the last few weeks, but I must go home and snuggle with my furry-babies for a bit. It's been a LOOONG day.  

Until next time, 

Jill

I'm still new to the blog-o-sphere. Follow me to get updates!