The Responsive Classroom is an approach to elementary teaching that emphasizes social, emotional, and academic growth in a strong and safe school community through a variety of common classroom practices, such as a morning meeting, student-designed rules and encouraging independence and creativity. The goal is to strengthen student learning.

 

Seven principles guide the Responsive Classroom 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 their individual competence: Lasting change begins with the adult community.

 

Watch a video (wmv) developed by Glen-Worden Elementary School teachers about the Responsive Classroom model for the school's Curiosity Showcase. To watch this video, you must have a video-playing software like Windows Media Player or Quicktime installed on your computer.

Check out more about Responsive Classroom.