Inclusive Classroom Rules

Today on the blog I want you to be curious and for us to reflect on the question “Are your classroom rules inclusive of all your students?”.

Are your classroom rules inclusive for all your students?

Aussie teachers are currently settled in to Term 3 (the teachable term as I like to call it). Our US and Canadian colleagues are excitedly returning from summer for the new school year and Back to School period. I don’t know about you, but my Instagram account is full of Back to School Resources and teachers putting in the hard yards to get themselves, and their learning spaces, ready for all those students who are coming back from their long summer break. As a teacher freezing in the wintery weather of Melbourne I have been a little jealous of all that summer sunshine.

The back to school period of time is always exhausting. All those new students who you are trying to build relationships with. A new class of students with their own personalities, learning styles and strengths and weaknesses. Teachers who have been through the back to school period know that the foundation to a successful year can be laid down in the early weeks spent together.

Teachers, yourself included, may spent several weeks explicitly, intentionally and repetitively teaching and reinforcing the rules you have for the learning space so that every child can experience success in the classroom as well as have a sense of belonging to their class group. As educators we know how important this is to students reaching their learning goals at school. Relationships are key and so we invest in building them – and then maintaining them – with our students.

Inclusive Classroom Environment

In my years as an educator I have been fortunate to work in many different learning environments and settings as well as in different roles. One of my roles was to mentor graduate teachers. I supported them to support students who were not neuro-typical in their mainstream classrooms.

I began looking at a lot of the common resources I saw teachers using in their classroom environment, specifically the visuals teachers were using, with the eye of an experienced special ed teacher.

The visuals were brightly coloured to be engaging, were clear in their direction and purpose however, not all of them were inclusive for the students.

Inclusive Classroom Strategies

There are many strategies for making a classroom inclusive. However I always believe that we should start with those simple and effective strategies which are easy for teacher to implement. So the inclusive classroom strategy this blog post focuses on is establishing inclusive classroom rules.

Increasingly in our classrooms teachers will find students with identified learning disabilities in their classroom. Even if you do not have a student with a disability in your mainstream classroom then you will know that the “one size fits all”descriptor does not apply to students. Why then do we use the common 5 L’s of Listening Posters in our classrooms?

Is it important to teach children how to tune into the teacher so that learning can occur?Absolutely however the catchy 5 L’s of Listening may not be inclusive for all your students and may send them the unintended message that they do not belong in your classroom because they may not be able to follow ‘the five simple rules’.

The Give me Five posters usually show either numbers 1-5 or show a hand with five fingers. The basis of the Give me Five is commonly:

1.Eyes are Looking

2. Ears are Listening

3. Lips are closed

4. Legs are crossed

5. Hands in laps

and looks similar to the image above.

Inclusive Whole Body Listening

So let’s explore the Whole Body Classroom Rules and see how they can be adjusted to reflect a more inclusive approach.

1. Eyes are focused.

For students in your classroom who have ASD, the usual Eyes are Looking is not possible. Many students with ASD need to look away from the teacher to be able to concentrate. The stress of maintaining eye contact in fact makes it harder to learn. Additionally there are some students for whom eye contact is culturally inappropriate. By changing the phrase to Eyes are Focusing – students know that they can focus on the teacher or they can focus on an alternate object if that helps them to concentrate. Providing choice to students empowers them as responsible learners.

2.Body is Calm

“Sitting up straight, legs crossed!”. I can still remember this phrase from when I was a student in the classroom. For many students the Legs Crossed phrase is incredibly difficult and hinders students from focusing on the verbal message the teacher is delivering.

For students who have ADHD movement and for students with ASD stimming such as rocking may be needed to support their active listening. A student in your classroom who has hypermobility issues may find sitting with legs crossed uncomfortable. As teachers you may have seen that student that slumps forward and appears to struggle to stay awake while sitting cross legged on the floor. Students with low muscle tone or core muscle weakness would be better lying on their stomachs to focus and listen. Students need to be focused and not distracting their peers. A more inclusive way of directing your students to do this is to be looking for “bodies that are calm”.

Feet that are safe and quiet is also more inclusive than feet still, legs still or legs crossed.

Arms Folded/ Hands are still

If students have difficulty with keeping their legs still, then keeping their hands still usually proves just as difficult. Not many students can keep their arms folded, and their legs folded comfortably for even the length of a mini-lesson. Teachers can fail to reflect on how they require students to attend while on the floor for the lesson introduction. These same teachers then report feelings of frustration when students are sent back to their desk and demonstrate that they did not listen while sitting on the floor.

Research has informed educators about the importance of students having their sensory diet needs filled. You may think “what on earth is a sensory diet” or “that sounds ridiculous” but we all use sensory feedback to keep us focused. Just think back to that last professional development meeting you had – the flicking the pen, the twirling your hair, the looking around the room,doodling on the paperwork, the re-crossing of your legs – to keep focused. Kids have the same sensory feedback needs. Hands that are quiet is inclusive. An additional inclusive statement is “Hands have fidgets” for those students who have been identified by an OT as needing a fidget object to focus such as students with ADHD.

Brain is thinking/ Mind is Ready

For students in your classroom with a learning difficulty and learning disability, inferring and generalising needs to be supported. When we ask students to come to the floor, or when they gather on the floor when they come in from their playground break we understand that it is now time to shelf those thoughts they were previously having. It is time to pivot and get their minds ready to think about new topics.

Unless we explicitly teach them that this behaviour is required, children will not always make this connection to what is happening Students need to be explicitly instructed to get their mind ready to learn and you will have your own visual cues and strategies that you like to use in your classroom to support your students to do this.

You can make your classroom more inclusive by scaffolding those students who do not have as flexible thinking as their peers and need assistance and visual cues to change their mindset so they are ready to learn.

There are many ways to create an inclusive classroom environment where all our students can experience a sense of belonging. The classroom rules, the explicit phrases and language we use is a great starting point as we spend many hours explicitly teaching and reminding students about them.

I hope this blog post has been food for thought. My hope is you have seen the value in using inclusive resources and phrases in your classroom.