The Responsive Classroom (RC) is an approach to teaching and learning that fosters safe, challenging, and joyful classrooms and schools, kindergarten through eighth grade. Developed by classroom teachers, it consists of practical strategies for bringing together social and academic learning throughout the school day. Since 1981, thousands of classroom teachers and hundreds of schools have used the Responsive Classroom approach to help create learning environments where children thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. In urban, rural, and suburban settings nationwide, educators using these strategies report increases in student investment, responsibility, and learning, and decreases in problem behaviors.
Origins is the Midwest regional center for the Responsive Classroom, providing on-site consulting in Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Oklahoma. Anyone from any state is welcome to attend our Responsive Classroom workshops.
The Responsive Classroom approach is informed by the work of many great educational theorists (see Research Articles supporting RC) as well as the experiences of exemplary classroom teachers. There are seven basic principles underlying this approach:
The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
There must be a balanced approach to all learning. Social research shows that learning is imbedded in a matrix of social interaction. The emotional state of a learner has a lot to do with successful learning.
How children learn is as important as what they learn.
In order for children to grasp learning, they must have a chance to be active, to try out and to discover for themselves. Scientific research in learning tells us children learn best when they construct their own learning through trial and error and reworking. Think about how you learn, even as an adult. When you care about what you are learning, when you have some choice about what you're learning, when you have the opportunity to practice again and again in a safe environment, making mistakes and correcting them yourself or going after the answers on your own, that's when you learn best. These are ingredients for successful learning.
The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
This principle comes from the work of Lev Vygotsky and a study done by Barbara Rogoff reported in Apprenticeship in Thinking (Oxford University Press, 1992). Their work shows that while children learn from doing work independently, reading and exploring on their own, the greatest cognitive learning comes when they interact with others about what they have experienced. It is in the sharing of the thinking that children make their greatest learning gains.
There is a specific set of social skills that children need in order to be successful academically and socially.
C – Cooperation: Children must have the opportunity to practice working together in many and varied ways all through the day. We can better accept differences when we work together and feel a sense of community and belonging together.
A – Assertion: the ability to stand up for one’s own ideas without hurting others and without negating others. Children must be coached and taught to do this. Children must be given the chance to practice in a “safe” environment where dialogue about one’s ideas and feelings is encouraged. Without many opportunities to practice, children will have difficulty thinking for themselves in the face of peer pressure.
R – Responsibility: The only way to learn to be responsible is to have many opportunities to practice being responsible. Children need to begin with small amounts of responsibility and then gradually be given more as they meet with success. As adults, our most powerful teaching tool is trust and belief in children’s ability to come through in responsible ways. This we show in our words and in our actions.
E – Empathy: Our world is growing more and more diverse and complex. The best response is to learn how to accept and respect differences. Parents and educators want children to be capable of carrying out conflict resolution. Children must have empathy in order to do conflict resolution. Adults must have empathy in order to teach children and their parents. Empathy gives us the capacity to care. Empathy comes from “knowing” others – Empathy grows from the practice of building relationships.
S – Self Control: The ultimate goal of discipline is that children will be in control of their own behavior and behave in an ethical manner. This skill comes like that of responsibility. In order to be in control of yourself, you must have many opportunities to truly practice the skills that are involved. The opportunities need to come in small increments that are manageable and will lead to success. In being proactive, teachers make sure children understand what’s expected and give many opportunities to practice before they’re expected to do so on their own. The reward for ethical behavior is intrinsic—the good, proud feeling inside that comes from having done the “right thing”. Like responsibility, self-control comes when adults trust and believe in the children they work with.
Knowing the children we teach individually, culturally, and developmentally is as important as knowing the content we teach.
To teach successfully we must begin by learning who our children are – what strengths, interests, experiences, culture, learning styles and development they bring to our learning environment. In any teaching situation we always begin with “what do the children know?” and “who are our children?” We make no assumptions.
Knowing the parents of the children we teach is important to knowing the children.
In Responsive Classroom teaching, we begin from a belief in the parent’s best intentions. Some parents may not know what might be best, but we operate from a belief that all parents want what is best for their children and that parent involvement is essential to children’s education.
How the adults at school work together to accomplish their mission is as important as individual competence.
Teachers and administrators must live the Responsive Classroom approaches in order to be able to teach them to children. Children model what they see and hear their teachers doing. The principles of the Responsive Classroom must be practiced and lived by the educators in their interactions with each other, with the children, and with the parents.
Teaching Practices
Classroom Practices
At the heart of the Responsive Classroom approach are ten classroom practices:
Morning Meeting – gathering as a whole class each morning to greet one another, share news, and warm up for the day ahead
Rule Creation – helping students create classroom rules to ensure an environment that allows all class members to meet their learning goals
Interactive Modeling – teaching children to notice and internalize expected behaviors through a unique modeling technique
Positive Teacher Language – using words and tone as a tool to promote children's active learning, sense of community, and self-discipline
Logical Consequences – responding to misbehavior in ways that allow children to fix and learn from their mistakes while preserving their dignity
Guided Discovery – introducing classroom materials using a format that encourages independence, creativity, and responsibility
Academic Choice – increasing student motivation by differentiating instruction and regularly allowing students teacher-structured choices in their work
Classroom Organization – setting up the room in ways that encourage students' independence, cooperation, and productivity
Working with Families – creating avenues for hearing parents' insights and helping them understand the school's teaching approaches
Collaborative Problem Solving – using conferencing, role playing, and other strategies to resolve problems with students
Social and academic learning are inextricably connected. Building a strong foundation in positive social skills sets the stage for academic learning. Teachers and students must work together to establish routines, rules, and guidelines for behavior that make their classrooms great environments for academic learning and social growth.
School-wide Practices
Schools implementing the Responsive Classroom approach school-wide typically adopt the following practices:
Aligning policies and procedures with Responsive Classroom philosophy—making sure everything, from the lunch routine to the discipline policy, enhances the self-management skills that children are learning through the Responsive Classroom approach
Allocating resources to support Responsive Classroom implementation—using time, money, space, and personnel to support staff in learning and using the Responsive Classroom approach
Planning all-school activities to build a sense of community—giving all of the school's children and staff opportunities to learn about and from each other through activities such as all-school meetings, cross-age recess or lunch, buddy classrooms, cross-age book clubs, and more
Welcoming families and the community as partners—involving family and community members in children's education by maintaining two-way communication, inviting them to visit and volunteer, and offering family activities
Organizing the physical environment to set a tone of learning—making sure, for example, that school-wide rules are posted prominently, displays emphasize student work, and all school spaces are welcoming, clean, and orderly
By separating emotion from logic and reason in the classroom, we've simplified school management and evaluation, but we've also then separated two sides of one coin—and lost something important in the process. —Robert Sylvester
Classroom Practices
