My students have been especially charming lately. This year my class has really taken ownership of the room.
It all began last week. I was frustrated after a particularly crazy morning. The students had been gradually building their stamina for reading and writing independently. I had been so proud how intentional and self driven the children had been during this time. On this particular day, however we had madness. Students were talking to each other, getting up to look at different books, and just generally doing anything but what they were supposed to be doing. I called the class back to the rug and, with my head in my hands, asked what they thought went wrong today.
I had my own list of thoughts on the matter but thankfully called on a student before launching into them. This sweet overactive boy said, "You know Ms. B we love writing. It's because we live it we're talking too much." Another child chipped in, "Yeah, we just get so excited we want to show it to somebody." this was not what I thought the problem was.
Intrigued I asked how could we fix this. The students though for a moment and said they would like to share before they went to write and then again after they finished writing. They named it the "share rule." The students now pair and share for 30 seconds before writing and then meet with partners for 10 minutes after writing.
This solution led to another problem I didn't realize we had. One child, a kid by the way labeled the previous year as a serious behavior problem with bullying behaviors, said he had concerns about the partner sharing. He expressed his concerns by saying, "You keep saying we're a community but I don't feel like we are. We are always partnered with people from our table teams but if we are a real community we should get to know everybody." His statement shocked me. I had been very intentional with the table groups. I started the year with the plan of making real cooperative learning teams and had been using resources from Laura Candler. I thought the teams were going really well and hadn't thought that the students would feel limited by them. (I still by the way love her stuff. Please visit http://www.lauracandler.com for great resources.) Several other students felt the same. We agreed to make a partner wheel that would change daily so that everyone would get a chance to partner with everyone. They called this the "Community Rule."
After we had created a solution for that problem, I asked if there were any other reasons for the off task behavior. One student mentioned that people were choosing spots too close to one another. We decided that you were to close if when you stretched out on the floor you could touch someone else. We named that the "Snow Angel Rule."
Finally the same "behavior problem" said we had one more problem. It had to do with the rugs in our room. I have a long standing two children per rug rule. My reflective student mentioned that the problem with that was that if there were two boys or two girls on the rug together the children would get into trouble. The class all agreed that the "Rug Rule" should be only one boy and one girl per rug.
I was pretty impressed with their problem solving and reflective thinking at this point but they weren't done. I get a lot of ideas from whole brain teaching (http://www.wholebrainteaching.com) and I use four of their rules. I say a rule number and my students respond with the rule and hand motions. They love this and it's really nice that if kids break a rule I just say the number and the whole class responds. I rarely have to directly reprimand a student. Anyway the kids asked to make some call and response rules for these too.
Rug Rule: 1 boy 1 girl (bring up right hand with pointer finger pointing up then bring up left hand with pointer finger pointing up)
Snow Angel Rule: If you are too close ( bring hands together like praying) then you have to move (separate your hands)
Community Rule: look at the wheel (point with your right hand and make a circular motion)
Share Rule: (have both hands palm up) First 30 seconds (move left hand up and down) Last 10 minutes (move right hand up and down)
As directed by children, we do the call and response before reading or writing to self. The new rules have been in place for a week now. My class has performed amazingly and even managed to surpass our goal of 30 minutes independent working time.
Lesson learned: Take the time to allow the students to problem solve behavior problems in the classroom.
