Responsive Classroom

The Responsive Classroom® approach to teaching and learning fosters safe, challenging, and joyful elementary classrooms and schools. Developed by classroom teachers, this approach consists of teaching practice for bringing together social and academic learning throughout the school day.

Guiding Principles

• The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum
• How children learn is as important as what they learn: Process and content go hand in hand
• The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction
• To be successful academically and socially, children need to learn and practice specific social skills. Five particularly important skills are cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control (CARES)
• Knowing the children we teach - individually, culturally, and developmentally - is as important as knowing the content we teach
• Knowing the families of the children we teach is as important as knowing the children we teach
• How we, the adults at school, work together is as important as our individual competence: Lasting change begins with the adult community.

For more information, visit http://www.responsiveclassroom.org