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The Responsive Classroom is an approach to elementary teaching that emphasizes social, emotional, and academic growth in a strong and safe school community. The goal is to enable optimal student learning. Created by classroom teachers and backed by evidence from independent research, the Responsive Classroom approach is based on the premise that children learn best when they have both academic and social-emotional skills. The approach therefore consists of classroom and schoolwide practices for deliberately helping children build academic and social-emotional competencies.

Since 1981, thousands of classroom teachers and hundreds of schools and school districts have used the Responsive Classroom approach to help create learning environments where children thrive academically, socially, and emotionally. In urban, rural, and suburban settings nationwide, educators using Responsive Classroom practices report increases in student learning, motivation, and responsibility, and

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decreases in problem behaviors.

Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc., a non-profit 501(c)3 organization in Turners Falls, Massachusetts, is the developer of the Responsive Classroom approach and offers professional development services and publications for educators.

Classroom Practices

At the heart of the Responsive Classroom approach are ten classroom practices:

Morning Meeting — gathering as a whole class each morning to greet one another, share news, and warm up for the day ahead

Rule Creation — helping students create classroom rules to ensure an environment that allows all class members to meet their learning goals

Interactive Modeling — teaching children to notice and internalize expected behaviors through a unique modeling technique

Positive Teacher Language — using words and tone as a tool to promote children’s active learning, sense of community, and self-discipline

Logical Consequences — responding to misbehavior in a way that allows children to fix and learn from their mistakes while preserving their dignity

Guided Discovery

Activity

— introducing classroom materials using a format that encourages independence, creativity, and responsibility

Academic Choice — increasing student motivation by differentiating instruction and regularly allowing students teacher-structured choices in their work

Classroom Organization — setting up the physical room in ways that encourage students’ independence, cooperation, and productivity

Working with Families — creating avenues for hearing parents’ insights and helping them understand the school’s teaching approaches

Collaborative Problem Solving — using conferencing, role playing, and other strategies to resolve problems with students

News and Announcements

Schoolwide Practices

Schools implementing the Responsive Classroom approach schoolwide typically adopt the following practices:

Aligning policies and procedures with Responsive Classroom philosophy — making sure everything from the lunch routine to the discipline policy enhances the self-management skills that children are learning through the Responsive Classroom approach

Allocating resources to support Responsive Classroom implementation — using time, money, space, and personnel to support staff in learning and using the Responsive Classroom approach

Planning all-school activities to build a sense of community — giving all of the school’s children and staff opportunities to learn about and from each other through activities such as all-school meetings, cross-age recess or lunch, buddy classrooms, and cross-age book clubs

Welcoming families and the community as partners — involving family and community members in the children’s education by maintaining two-way communication, inviting parents and others to visit and volunteer, and offering family activities

Organizing the physical environment to set a tone of learning — making sure, for example, that schoolwide rules are posted prominently, displays emphasize student work, and all school spaces are welcoming, clean, and orderly