Classroom norms

The first week of school we focused on establishing our classroom routines, rules, and values.  I prefer to think of them as norms: this is the normal behavior that scholars should expect in our classroom.

We talked about how it is ok to make mistakes and that mistakes are opportunities to learn.  No one knows everything, and we can always keep learning more.  If you never make a mistake that means you are never trying challenging things and you aren't being a true scholar.  It's important to me that the scholars feel safe taking academic risks in our classroom.

We also discussed our class norm that some things will be hard for us and that's ok.  The important thing is not to give up when something gets hard.  It's ok to ask for help, take a break, or try a different strategy to solve the problem.  It's not ok to give up or put yourself down by saying things like "I'm bad at this" or "I can't do it."

We learned our first icon of depth and complexity, rules, in the context of our classroom rules.  We discussed that rules keep us safe and help us remember the right way to do things.  Rules are here to help us.