We began our year together talking about norms, and about how we would treat each other as learners. We ended up creating classroom norms and personal standards to live by:
We come back to these norms all the time, calling each other out (including me when I don’t turn off my cell phone, which is a norm they wanted to put on that list) and reminding us of what we’re supposed to be doing.
Well, we’ve added some new norms to our classroom recently, based on new things we’re doing together. And just like the last ones, we brainstormed together and then narrowed down our favorites. And we’re so good at that. I wish I’d have recorded the conversations around these norms, because they are such great examples of respectful, civil discourse leading to consensus. LOVE IT!
Ok, here’s what we’ve got:
The second group of norms is related to our work on Edmodo (more on exactly what that is sometime soon). We started out without an specific “rules,” just the basic ones that we follow every day in our room. But as we got better used to collaborating and working on Edmodo, we started so have some concerns about how it was going. For me, the best part of this list is that all I had to say was, “I’ve noticed some things about Edmdo lately. What are you thinking about it?” and they thought of the same things as me!
There was an in-between list where they then proposed norms related to each of these concerns, but I don’t have a picture of it. 😦 Fortunately, I think they all ended up on our final poster:
But just like with any expectations, rules or norms, the bid deal is following them. And we’re doing such an amazing job of that! I really do have the best bunch of 5th graders around!
How do you use norms in your classroom? Do you norms look like ours? If so, how so? Thanks in advance for helping us learn!