Key Working Agreements in the Classroom
The first week of school is always crazy. Not only are the teachers and students getting back into a routine, but so many important skills are being taught that week. While these skills might not be content specific, they are extremely important in setting the tone for the rest of the year.
After my first year of teaching, I had experimented with many different classroom mangagement techniques. I was not happy with what I had tried out, so I decided to attend a professional development session focused on classroom management. While I had an understanding of what good classroom management looked like and sounded like, this professional development did give me some great ideas to take back to the classroom. One of the ideas was to create classroom key working agreements. This idea stuck with me and I have used it for the past three years when creating "rules" in the classroom that first week of school.
There are five different working agreements that the students create the first week of school in my classroom. While the agreements do not have to be limited to these five only, I feel that these specific agreements relate the best to my classroom.
These are the five categories we work on for our key working agreements:
1. Listening
2. Participation
3. Expectations
4. Problems
5. Organization
Within these five categories, I create questions that the students answer to develop each key working agreement. This year, I had students work in groups to begin creating each key working agreement. Using one laptop, the group had to create a one page Word document or a one slide PowerPoint answering the questions related to the specific category. Within a fifteen minute period, the PowerPoint or Word document had to be completed. It was then presented to the class where we agreed on the final key working agreement as a class for each category.
Our final key working agreements that the students agreed on are below.
1. We will show we are listening by looking at the speaker and waiting to ask questions until they are finished.
2. We will participate by giving the speaker eye contact, listening when others are talking, staying on task, working with others and not being a hog or log.
3. We expect our classmates to be kind, respectful, work together and share the workload.
4. We will solve problems on our own by being fair and talking it out. If we can't solve it, we will tell an adult.
5. We will stay organized by putting materials in the correct spot and cleaning up after ourselves.
These are now displayed in our classroom and take the place of our classroom rules. I really love including this activity during the first week of school because it allows the students to take ownership of the rules for our classroom. It also helps keep the agreements focused and different from one another by breaking them up into different categories.
I've included a link to a document that includes the five key working agreements for my classroom and the questions that I had my students answer to create each key working agreement. Feel free to make changes to the agreements so they work for you. If you give it a try, be sure to let me know!
Click here to access the Key Working Agreements document.
