Responsive Classroom

What is a Responsive Classroom?

• Morning Meeting: A daily routine that builds community, creates a positive climate for learning, and reinforces academic and social skills.

• Rules and Logical Consequences: A clear and consistent approach to discipline that fosters responsibility and self-control.

• Guided Discovery: A format for introducing materials that encourages inquiry, heightens interest, and teaches care of the school environment.

• Academic Choice: An approach to giving children choices in their learning that helps them become invested, self-motivated learners.

• Classroom Organization: Strategies for arranging materials, furniture, and displays to encourage independence, promote caring and maximize learning.What is a Responsive Classroom?

Incorporating all of these things into your classroom help to make it a more stimulating, challenging, safer, and happier environment for all of the students. I think that most of these things help to directly affect how well your classroom is going to run and you can start to build a classroom community with them. Fostering a classroom where students feel like they belong and they are safe opens the window to the students becoming more involved in their education. The responsive classroom helps you to create a positive place for the students to share their insights and you can even increase their motivation and get them excited about their learning by giving them "choices" in what they learn. For example, if the students need to study about marine life instead of assigning them what they need to learn about, you can give them the opportunity to choose which marine animal they want to learn about. This way you are still fitting in the curriculum but are also actively involving the students and giving them motivation to learn about their animal because they chose it out of their own personal interest. I definitely plan on approaching my classroom with this type of teaching in mind. Although I am sure it is hard to incorporate of these things all of the time, it definitely seems to be beneficial to try :)