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Edutopia blogger, Nichalos Provenzano, shared his experiences teaching the founding documents of our country in his recent blog entry "Creating Classroom Rules with a Bill of Student Rights." He explains that he lets the class come up with their own founding documents after students study our nation's and the history behind them. He mentions in return the students learn US history and help create a cooperative classroom environment.
I like this idea, however, I don't have the pleasure of teaching US history and the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution. Hmmm, maybe I could incorporate this type of deciding rules as a class to our lab group contracts. This seems to be where my middle school students struggle the most. As a class, they do okay with respect and safe learning environment, probably because I'm there to make sure it all works out. It is in their own individual lab groups where the discontent begins. Maybe at the beginning of the year we could come up with "Bill of Lab Team Member Rights." It may take a little time to organize and explain but in the long run, I think this would solve, maybe, some of the squabbles I have to deal with as middle school teacher.
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Works Cited
Provenzano, N. Creating Classroom Rules with a Bill of Student's Right. Edutopia. Retrieved July 21, 2011 from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/bill-student-rights-classroom-rules-nicholas-provenzano?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EdutopiaNewContent+%28Edutopia%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
I teach fourth grade and I have my class come up with their own Class Constitution after studying the Constitution within the first few weeks of school. They respond well to "making their own rules" of course with my input added as well. :)
ReplyDeleteI too read this article and liked the idea of creating a student "Bill of Rights" it provides students with opportunities to take ownership, and also provides the teacher with an outlook on what students find important to maintain their classroom. A lot of times what we set as rules are the same as what kids want, they just want to be the ones to say it.
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