Rules

How Do You Define Rules For Your Classroom?

            My cooperating teacher said that a lot of her rules that she implements in her classroom are used throughout the entire school. These rules consist of three general ideas: be safe, be respectful, and be responsible. For discipline in the school my cooperating teacher did give me a form that the school calls major and minor behavior forms, which are used simply for disciplinary means and a way to get the students to follow the rules. Obviously, a major form is when a student does something more serious and a minor for is when a student does something less serious. The form consists of the students name, where the incident occurred, and what the incident was. On the minor form is a checklist of incidents, which include: profanity, tattling, blurting, teasing, non-compliance, lying/ cheating, disruption, and rough play. These forms are used throughout the entire school and are similar to my elementary and middle school forms, but instead we called it  “being written up.” My cooperating teacher also went on to say that for particular projects there are certain rules; for example, if they are creating certain projects that require glue and scissors, do not mix them together. I think that these rules are effective and work for her and I believe that as a teacher you have to find out what works best for you and your students. I think that I will have set rules in my classroom before I start teaching and I will try to think of everything but I am sure that I will have to adjust some of my rules on the fly and add some as well.