Rules in School

by Mary Beth Forton, Deborah Porter, Chip Wood

This edition of “Rules in School” is now out of print. The 2nd edition was published in 2011 (ISBN 9781892989420)

Written by four experienced classroom teachers, this book offers practical technique for: helping students articulate their hopes and dreams for school, involving students in generating classroom rules that grow out of their hopes and dreams, modeling, practicing, and role playing the rules, using teacher language effectively to reinforce the rules, teaching children about logical consequences for rule breaking, choosing effective logical consequences, and teaching children to live by the rules outside the classroom.

Genres: Teaching, Education, Nonfiction, Professional Development

256 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

Reviews

[Tandava Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good, and very similar to Teaching Children to Care, which I also just read recently. What I appreciated here was that, after laying out the basic principles, it had separate sections for different grade levels (K-2, 3-5, 6-8). So I could skip over the first two and just read about the application to middle school specifically. Often in books like this I have a hard time telling what level is most appropriate for my kids, since I’m still pretty new as a teacher and it’s such an odd age, so I found this very helpful.

[Chris Loeffler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quick read with tons of practical advice. Written from the teacher's perspective, and teachers with clear experience. It connected so easily to my own teaching and experiences with ways to improve my work. I thought I had a really strong grasp on Responsive Classroom techniques, but I found that this clarified my understanding in general and corrected me on a few small things as well. It gave the big picture overview well and touched on so many little things in the day-to-day implementation, it feels like you can take this easily and apply it right away to your classroom. I would highly recommend this for any Elementary teacher, even if you've been teaching for a while.

[Kristen Iworsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of helpful advice.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very helpful during my first year of teaching. Great food for thought even though I was not able to apply many of the principles outlined in this book simply because they conflicted with my particular school's policies.

[Silke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lots of great info for first year teachers. My two major takeaways: set up rules and connect them to goal setting, and establish procedures and practice them through interactive role plays right at the beginning of the year.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's helping. Slowly.