Rules Are Up!

I have seen  books and articles from teachers writing about their first year teaching. This will probably be my last year, so thought I'd throw out  my final year experiences. I've never seen that before.
Today I finished putting up my rules for the year. I'll be teaching middle school science at a school in Honduras. The rules would probably be the same no matter who (modified some for age) or what I was teaching.
I didn't invent these. I worked for Collier County in Florida for 3 years. New teachers to the county had to take a few evening courses. I had been teaching for 12 years and was working on a doctorate when I took the courses. There has been a little modifying of them, but basically these are the rules that a Collier County Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum thought were good. They have worked well for me ever since.

He felt the kids had 2 different situations: 1. when they were being instructed and 2. when they were working on some task. Below are the 2 sets of rules.

Instruction Rules:
1. Raise your hand and wait until teacher calls on you to speak.
2. Seated at your place.
3. Pay attention.

Work Time Rules:
1. Talk quitely only with those close to you.
2. Leave the room only with the teacher's permission.
3. Stay on task.

And there is the Rule for Always:
Treat others as you should wish to be treated.

There aren't too many and they are all stated in a positive way. I'm not sure that positive way makes a difference, but it was the fashion for awhile. The Collier County guy suggested you have some visual way to show the kids you are switching from "Instruction" to "Work Time" rules. I found the arrow moving back and forth became more of a distraction than it was worth. Maybe that sort of thing works well with other teachers' styles.

I've fiddled with the "Rule for Always" over the years. There is always the clever kid who likes to call others names. If the rule reads "Treat others as you want to be treated," then clever kid will say he (invariably a boy) wants to be called names.The way I word it the clever kid is put in the position of facing that he shouldn't wish to be called names and so his actions still violate the rule.

More on consequences as the year progresses.

Kids come back on August 16th. Since my rules are up and I have been successful in persuading admin that it is in the best interest of the environment for me to keep my classroom bulletin boards as they were at the end of the school year, I am set - except for a professional development on Inquiry Based Science Instruction on Wednesday (August 11th).

After 35 years of being in education (my first year of student teaching was 1975), the first day's lesson plans are automatic.
Day 1: Cooperative learning teams and initiation into the rules with a science quiz bowl game related to the upcoming topic: 6th - Plants, 7th - Kingdoms of Organisms, 8th - The Human Organism. Over the course of this blog there will be a lot about how I work the teams and motivate using games and points.
Day 2  depends on how many students have not returned from vacation or how likely it is there will be changes to the schedule or classes. Probably it will be some sort of vocabulary activity. Something like pass out vocabulary words and students have to wirte a definition and draw a picture to go with the word. (That will give me some student work to go up on the walls. Back to School Night when parents visit is only 3 weeks away.)