Rules and Expectations in the Classroom

Rules and expectations help maintain a successful and positive learning environment while allowing structure in the classroom. It is important for rules and expectations to be thorough while simultaneously being simple and efficient for students to understand. It is better to have a few simple rules than a long list that can get confusing for students and educators.

The positive behavior chart looks like a traffic light with meaningful colors and words for each light. There are five lights from the top: reward, great job, ready to learn, warning, and then oh no! Every student starts off in the middle on green at “ready to learn”. This means that every day is a fresh start so if a student misbehaved the day before then they know not to get too worked up because there is a new day. The goal of a positive behavior chart is to be constantly reinforcing good behavior so it encourages students to continue moving up in behavior. Another procedure I would like to implement is hand symbols for communication between the educator and the students. For example if I am going over subject material and a child holds up a symbol to go to the restroom I can either show the no symbol or yes without stopping instruction. The hand symbol technique allows good communication with little to no disruption.