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Responsive Classroom
Beecher Road School uses the Responsive Classroom approach to create a strong foundation for learning. Watch for announcements from the school about workshops designed to promote the philosophy of this approach at school and in your home.
The Responsive Classroom is an approach to teaching and learning that fosters safe, challenging, and joyful elementary classrooms and schools. Created by classroom teachers and backed by independent research, it consists of practical strategies for bringing together social and academic learning throughout the school day. Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc., a non-profit organization in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, is the developer of the Responsive Classroom approach and offers professional development, services, and materials about it for educators.
Since 1981, thousands of classroom teachers and hundreds of schools and school districts 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.
Guiding Principles :
The Responsive Classroom approach is informed by the work of many great educational theorists as well as the experiences of exemplary classroom teachers. Seven basic principles underlie this approach:
- The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
- How children learn is as important as what they learn: Process and content go hand in hand.
- The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
- To be successful academically and socially, children need a set of social skills: cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.
- Knowing the children we teach–individually, culturally, and developmentally–is as important as knowing the content we teach.
- Knowing the families of the children we teach and working with them as partners is essential to children's education.
- How the adults at school work together is as important as individual competence: Lasting change begins with the adult community.
Teaching Practices:
The Responsive Classroom approach includes the following main teaching practices:
- Morning Meeting: A daily routine that builds community, creates a positive climate for learning, and reinforces academic and social skills.
- Rules and Logical Consequences: A clear and consistent approach to discipline that fosters responsibility and self-control.
- Guided Discovery: A format for introducing materials that encourages inquiry, heightens interest, and teaches care of the school environment.
- Academic Choice: An approach to giving children choices in their learning that helps them become invested, self-motivated learners.
- Classroom Organization: Strategies for arranging materials, furniture, and displays to encourage independence, promote caring, and maximize learning.
- Working with Families: Ideas for involving families as true partners in their children's education.
Copied from the Responsive Classroom website to learn more visit www.responsiveclassroom.com or ask your child’s teacher.