We wrote our class rules!!

While we have been diving into our second grade curriculum, we have also been taking time to establish rules and classroom procedures that will help us achieve our hopes and dreams for this school year. After spending time thinking about what we hoped to accomplish this school year, we took these hopes and dreams public by posting our sentences and drawings about them on our classroom wall. Some of our hopes and dreams for this year are as follows:

"I hope to learn science."

"I hope to read more books than ever before."

"I hope to learn more about writing."

"I hope to learn division."

"I hope to learn the names of everyone in the class and make new friends."

Ask your child about his or her hope and dream for the school year!

After we decided upon our hopes and dreams, we thought about what had to happen in our classroom in order for these dreams to be achieved. We brainstormed a list of ideas. Many of these things ended up being stated in the negative. For example, "Don't talk during work time" or "Don't rush through your work." Instead of focusing on what we shouldn't do, we decided to focus on what we should do. Groups of students worked together to change the ideas that were stated in the negative (Don't do something...) into the positive, so students would know what they should be doing.

At this point, we realized that we had way too many rules! There was no way we could remember them all! We also noticed that many of them said the same ideas, but in different ways. Our next step was to combine our similar rules and come up with a way to state them as one single rule.

Finally, we had our completed set of class rules! Everyone "owns" our rules because we wrote them together. Letters stating our class rules went home to families earlier this week so that everyone knows what we have been doing as we work to build our classroom community!

We are currently working on making posters that illustrate our class rules so that visitors to our classroom understand the expectations for working in room 205. We strive to be a respectful community that works together!