Jobs and Rules

As part of the Responsive Classroom approach to building classroom climate and community we spend time each September practicing expectations and creating rules and jobs for our classroom to help carry us successfully throughout the year. Having the students share in creating our rules and jobs helps them to understand the purpose and importance of having these in our classroom, and helps the students to take ownership of the management and care of our space, our materials, and each other throughout the year. In my previous post about hopes and dreams I described how our discussion of hopes and dreams for first grade led into our discussion of the school rules (discussing how following the rules helps create an environment where we can all achieve our hopes and dreams). We created three posters, one for each school rule, giving examples of what they look and sound like inside of our classroom (the school rules are Be Safe, Be Kind, and Do Your Best). This week we moved on to a discussion of classroom jobs and how we all do different, important jobs to help make our classroom a clean, safe, organized place to learn. The students chose the following jobs: pencil sharpener, # of the day recorder, line leader, messenger, snack drink helper, calendar/weather recorder, chair stacker, floor checker, lunch name tag mover, lights helper, book checker, table washer, and substitute. Below are two photos, one of the rules posters we created, and one of our job chart.