How can teachers set up ground rules with there students?
I agree with involoving the kids as someone else said. Lots of places have the children draw up rules and a contract which they all sign. Rules should be positive not negative (i.e. ‘walk in the corridors’ rather than ‘don’t run’ because our minds (especially childrens’ minds) focus on the verb ‘run’ first so they ignore the ‘dont’ bit…and they might not even have been considering running until they saw that word! It also helps create a good atmosphere, where you are rewarding peopel for keeping to the rules rather than punishing for breaking. So instead of having rules about not fighting, you have rules about listening and respecting, then you reward kids for what they are doing. Ask the children to imagine they are talking in front of the whole class…what would they want everyone to do? If you get get them to be in the teachers shoes, they can empathise more and get buy in. Get them to imagine how they would feel if each rule was kept to or broken. Depending on age, they could dr
