Articles

Bullying is unwanted aggressive behavior between school-aged children. It is a way that a child with physical or social power abuses a less powerful child. Cyberbullying, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is “bullying that takes place over digital devices” and involves “sending, posting, or sharing…

You hear mean and unwelcome teasing as students do math activities on electronic devices. You see exclusion when a group of students are playing an online game. You suspect that students are engaging in behaviors that are gateways to cyberbullying. What can you do? Teach safe and inclusive behavior as…

The beginning of the school year is a time to get to know our students. We prepare community-building activities and lessons to help students feel safe in their classrooms and school and lay the groundwork for them to build a strong sense of belonging and significance. Knowing our students’ families…

Julie Kelly and Kirsten Howard are Responsive Classroom consulting teachers and contributing authors for the forthcoming Empowering Educators series (Julie worked on Empowering Educators for Grades 3, 4, 5; Kirsten worked on Empowering Educators for Grades K, 1, 2). For these new resources, both authors wrote about the importance of…

  Early in the school year, all educators are faced with the same important task: getting to know their new students. To learn some effective strategies for making connections with students at the beginning of a new school year, Responsive Classroom sat down with Andy Moral and Heather Young. Andy…

  Empowering Adults to Support Each Other at the Beginning of a New School Year:  A Conversation with Authors Emily Parrelli and Lisa Dewey Wells   Emily Parrelli and Lisa Dewey Wells are Responsive Classroom consulting teachers and contributing authors for the forthcoming Empowering Educators series (Emily worked on Empowering…

  A new book from CRS Publishing, Make Learning Meaningful: How to Leverage the Brain’s Natural Learning Cycle in K–8 Classrooms, offers a brain-based approach to sustaining student engagement and provides examples of what the natural learning cycle looks and sounds like for teaching academics, discipline, and social-emotional skills in…

Did the first half of the school year give you a “déjà vu” feeling from your first year of teaching? Everything feels new and unfamiliar. A lot of time is spent ironing out kinks in systems that you thought would be seamless, only to discover – that’s not going to work! A…

Last spring, when terms like global pandemic, virus, hybrid-, distance-, synchronous-, and asynchronous-learning first became a regular part of educators’ vernacular and most educators across the country were thrown into unfamiliar territory, I couldn't wait for the school year to be finished. Everything felt new, uncomfortable, and stressful, and trying to…

Watching a student show up to school each day excited to learn is one of the great joys of teaching. We give our students that spark when we help them figure out what they want to achieve during the school year, then show them the ways they can achieve those…

“When we start the day with everyone together, face to face, welcoming each person, sharing news, listening to individual voices, and communicating as a caring group, we make several powerful statements. We say that every person counts. We say that the way we interact individually and as a group is…

It’s been another great year at Center for Responsive Schools! We are grateful for the opportunity to continue sharing the Responsive Classroom approach to Social-Emotional Learning with educators around the world. Here are some fun facts that sum up how we did just that in 2018.   Responsive Classroom Around…

Students come to ACS Cobham International School in England from all over the world. Some stay for their entire pre-collegiate school experience and others make a home there for just a few years before the next stop on their globe-trotting journey. “There is a huge range of cultural expectations [among…

Taking proactive steps to build a strong learning community, with practices like positive teacher language, interactive modeling, and investing students in rules through Hopes and Dreams, does a lot to prevent misbehavior before it starts. However, there will still be occasions when you need to respond to misbehavior. These moments…

Children need a classroom environment they can understand and trust. They need to understand the routines and to know where to find things, they need uncluttered spaces to do their work, and they need clear, safe pathways for moving about. It’s essential that classrooms be well organized, predictable, and orderly,…

As the bustle of the after-school and after-work hours wound down for the night, I found my eight-year-old daughter in tears in her bedroom. She was hunched over her sketch pad. Colored pencils and multiple versions of self-portraits were spread all over the desk. When I asked her what was…

It’s the end of the week and Mrs. Cofie’s fourth-graders are gathering in the meeting area to begin Morning Meeting. As they find their places in the circle, they review the morning message. In Mrs. Cofie’s classroom, Friday’s message is always connected to the week’s social studies learning. There’s a…

Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting is an engaging way to start each day, build a strong sense of community, and set children up for success socially and academically. Each morning, students and teachers gather together in a circle for twenty to thirty minutes and interact with one another during four purposeful…

Children learn a great deal, academically and socially, by collaborating—working together toward common goals. A good way to help students begin developing collaboration skills is by teaching them how to exchange ideas, information, and opinions as they converse with partners or in small groups. Partner and small-group chats require complex…

Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting is a great way to set a positive tone for the day of learning ahead while also having fun and building community. It’s also a great way to give students rich experience with the language arts. Into each meeting component—greeting, sharing, group activity, and morning message—teachers…

When Elizabeth Powell and I co-taught in an inclusion program for students on the autism spectrum, we discovered that Morning Meeting offered an excellent opportunity to address these students’ needs and to help them connect to their classmates by using two of their often overlooked strengths: humor and a passionate…

Adapted from the new book The Language of Learning: Teaching Students Core Thinking, Listening, & Speaking Skills  Curiosity is at the heart of learning—and a healthy curiosity depends on questioning. Learning to ask questions moves children beyond themselves; they become able not only to consider what they know or think…

How can we build upon children's natural sense of wonder about the world around them? How can we include more science learning during our busy school days? An answer is the Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting. Beginning each day with this purposeful structure helps strengthen the community of the classroom and…