Responsive Classroom Approach
The Responsive Classroom approach to teaching is comprised of a set of well-designed practices intended to create safe, joyful, and engaging classrooms and school communities. The emphasis is on helping students develop their academic, social, and emotional skills in a learning environment that is developmentally responsive to their strengths and needs.
Core Belief
In order to be successful in and out of school, students need to learn a set of social and emotional competencies—cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy, and self-control—and a set of academic competencies—academic mindset, perseverance, learning strategies, and academic behaviors.
Guiding Principles
The Responsive Classroom approach is informed by the work of educational theorists and the experiences of exemplary classroom teachers. Six principles guide this approach:
Principle 1
Teaching social and emotional skills is as important as teaching academic content.
Principle 2
How we teach is as important as what we teach.
Principle 3
Great cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
Principle 4
How we work together as adults to create a safe, joyful, and inclusive school environment is as important as our individual contribution or competence.
Principle 5
What we know and believe about our students—individually, culturally, developmentally—informs our expectations, reactions, and attitudes about those students.
Principle 6
Partnering with families—knowing them and valuing their contributions—is as important as knowing the children we teach.
Source: https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/about/principles-practices/
