Classroom Rules for Infants

A brief introduction.

As a first time contributor to this blog I thought it might be worth introducing myself and letting you know a bit about my background. My name’s Matt, as a former teacher I’ll be using these blog posts to share ideas, advice and any tips I can think of to help the teaching community. My teaching experience is centered around the Early Years. I’ve worked as a teaching assistant, supply teacher and class teacher in and around the Sheffield area. I was trained to teach both Foundation Stage and Key Stage One although I’ve worked with Key Stage 2 as well. If you enjoy this post and have any ideas of your own please feel free to contribute. I’ve always found one of the best things about teaching is how helpful and willing colleagues are when it comes to helping each other out. As we are about to start a new school year it seemed like a post about helping children to settle into their new environment would be a great place to start.

Introducing your expectations to an Infant class

As pupils begin a new year it could be useful to make them aware of any rules and expectations they will need to remember whilst at school. Working together with your pupils to clearly set out expectations could not only help with behaviour management, but also give children ownership over the way their learning environment is run.

Discussing your ideas

When classroom rules are discussed it’s a good idea to make pupils feel included in the process. It might seem like a boring topic but you can capture their interest straight away by making the topic interactive. If you have a VLE (Virtual Learning Environment) why not upload a quick video clip of a naughty cartoon character or child from a film to spark some interest, this could be followed up by photos or illustrations on an interactive whiteboard to provide children with a stimulus to decide their new rules. As ideas are suggested, pictures could be annotated by you or the pupils, try and be positive when writing those rules down, using ‘we will’, rather than ‘we will not’ can make a real difference to a child’s reaction.

Displaying your new rules

Once the class have decided on their rules you’ll need to make sure everyone can see them. You could use the annotated pictures from your whiteboard to create a slide show display for parents and carers or even members of other classes. These pictures could then be printed out and used for a class book or display so you and your pupils can refer to it if there are ever any problems with behaviour management. If you choose to make a display then it’s a quick and easy way to fill up some of that empty wall space at the start of a new term.

Sharing your new rules online

A digital copy of your class rules could be uploaded to your VLE or linked from your school website. Sharing your expectations at the start of the year is a great way of making parents and carers feel included in the class, helping them to understand how the environment works and also reassuring them about the standards expected. Why not take the chance to develop the topic further? If you are using a VLE you could take advantage of its features by writing a self marking quiz about the topic or uploading the previously used images for the children to look at and label at home.

Below are some links to sites with free resources to help you create your class rules

Tags:

advice

Behaviour Management

Primary