At Kent Elementary our building goal is to create a learning environment in which each
learning community member contributes in a positive manner .With that goal in mind and
armed with the information from our school quality review, the Site Based team
recognized that our school needed a comprehensive and consistent approach to social
emotional education, classroom management and discipline. While all well intended, with the
many changes in staff and leadership this building has undergone over the last few years,
our strategies and techniques have become fragmented . After looking at several
programs and approaches, the Site- Based team felt that Responsive Classroom was the
right fit for our school.
The Responsive Classroom approach is a widely used, research-backed approach to
elementary education that increases academic achievement, decreases problem behaviors,
improves social skills, and leads to more high-quality instruction. While the program will
grow in its complexity as well as its effectiveness over the coming months and years we
felt there was so much value to this program that we will begin training our teachers and
introducing elements of it this fall.
Below please find some introductory information.
Parents will be provided with more in depth and specific information as we get the new
school year started
WHAT IS RESPONSIVE CLASSROOM?
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 school wide practices for deliberately
helping children build academic and social-emotional competencies.
Guiding Principles
Seven principles, informed by the work of educational theorists and the experiences of
exemplary classroom teachers, guide the Responsive Classroom approach:
o
The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
o
How children learn is as important as what they learn: Process and content go hand
in hand.
o
The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
o
To be successful academically and socially, children need a set of social skills:
cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.
o
Knowing the children we teach-individually, culturally, and developmentally-is as
important as knowing the content we teach.
o
Knowing the families of the children we teach and working with them is essential to
children's education.
o
How the adults at school work together is as important as their individual
competence: Lasting change begins with the adult community.
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.
Our school approach will begin to evolve around the tenets of the responsive classroom
Assertion, responsibility, empathy and self-control
If you would like to have more information please check out their website at
www.responsiveclassroom.org