Hi! Welcome to the list, Nancy. I look forward to hearing all you have to say. :-)
I also teach in a private school (7th grade Humanities, and middle and upper school Rock Bands), and do not in fact post rules at the beginning of the year. The students themselves write them. Their first homework assignment is to make a list about what effective teachers do, and their second assignment is to make a list about what effective students do. We discuss each list, and then I tell them they need to write up a list of rules for the classroom - no more than six. This gives them early practice at collaboration, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and more. We do the list in a word processor, projected on a screen, so by the end of the class period I have the rules posted in the classroom, signed by all students and by me. It seems to work pretty well. The idea is based loosely on Mark Springer's "Soundings" classroom. Take care, Bill Ivey Stoneleigh-Burnham School _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
