By Alusine Fullah
Yes, indeed, the classroom is a world on its own. To achieve a positive learning environment it is essential to have clear classroom agreements. It allows the teacher and students to have mutual respect, learn from each other, and live together in the same positive and constructive space. In line with that, it is convenient to establish classroom agreements with rules and consequences that allow a positive learning environment. In other words, as tutors (especially class masters and Heads of Department), you and your pupils/ students should set classroom rules and consequences for a healthy learning environment. You don’t want your classroom to be a state of nature where might is right. You don’t want your class to be in a state of anarchy. So preventing all those, you and your pupils should set the rules straight. Remember, Thomas Hobbes said: “A society where there is no law life will be brutish, short and nasty.” So laws are crucial for effective learning environment.
It is important to create the classroom rules with your students for a powerful start of the year. I suggest that at the beginning of the academic year, use one of the first sessions of the course and structure it chronologically to establish classroom rules using the following steps:
Explain the purpose of setting the rules and consequences to students. But first, start by asking yourself and your pupils: why are we here? By doing that, you have started reinforcing the internal motivation of the students. It consists of highlighting the impact that everything that you do in the school year for your students and everything they achieve at the end of the course is successful. In that classroom, as a tutor don’t be autocratic in setting the rules and consequences. Since we are living in a democratic world, so you should be. Put simple, setting those rules and consequences, allow the pupils/ students to have their say. Give them the mike or opportunity to choose the laws and consequences for their class. In a case where you as a tutor choose all the rules and consequences, the possibilities are very high for pupils not to obey those rules. First, of all they will say: Ah these laws were imposed to us and they are very rigid.
Draw the proposal: in the next day, you can organise an activity so the students can propose the rules that they consider will be necessary to build the classroom to reach goals. Without worries, you can divide students into groups of 4 and 5 and ask them to define some rules that they will later present in front of the class. You can also propose yours. When this session begins, remember to collect and write the entire proposal on the board.
Summarise and organise the proposed rules: in this step, you take the leading role in grouping the proposed and summarise them to stay with the final ones. But, don’t forget also to do it with the collaboration with the students. One idea is to allow students to vote to choose the final rules, and while emphasising in the reasons why these rules are better than others.
Share the rules and always keep them visible in class. The rules should always be present in the classroom so the teacher and the students can refer to them at any time. For this, I suggest making posters with the rules to hang them in class or for example create a written agreement at all the members of the classroom must sign.
Now you and your students have created the rules. Yes it is fine. But you are not yet there. The next step is to create the consequences for each rule. For instance, in my classroom, we have rules like noise causing. If someone flouts this rule he/she will not go for lunch for two days. So the rule is nobody causes noise in class and the consequence is: you will not go for lunch for two days. So for effective classroom environment, you should create logical positive and negative consequences associated with every rule you and your pupils have agreed on. The use of outcomes is crucial when creating classroom rules and effective culture. They allow the creation of a cause-effective environment in the classroom that leads the students towards positive learning environment.
