The Seven Guiding Principles Responsive Classroom The Seven Guiding Principles

The Responsive Classroom approach is research based. In schools using the Responsive Classroom approach: 1. Children showed greater increases in reading and math test scores. 2. Teachers felt more effective and more positive about teaching. 3. Children had better social skills. 4. Teachers offered more high-quality instruction. 5. Children felt more positive about school. 6. Teachers collaborated with each other more. Dr. Sara Rimm-Kaufman, Curry School of Education, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA www.responsiveclassroom.org

1. The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.

2. How children learn is as important as what they learn: process and content go hand in hand.

3. The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction. 21st Century skill: collaboration

4. There is a specific set of social skills that children need to learn and practice in order to be successful academically and socially: cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control (CARES). Assume nothing…teach everything!

5. Knowing the children we teach-individually, culturally, and developmentally-is as important as knowing the content we teach.

6. Knowing the families of the children we teach is as important as knowing the children we teach .

7. How we, the adults at school, work together is as important as our individual competence: lasting change begins with the adult community.