Responsive Classroom

The Seven Guiding Principles

The Responsive Classroom approach is research based.

In schools using the Responsive Classroom approach:

1. Children showed greater increases in reading and math test scores.

2. Teachers felt more effective and more positive about teaching.

3. Children had better social skills. 4. Teachers offered more high-quality

instruction. 5. Children felt more positive about

school. 6. Teachers collaborated with each other

more.Dr. Sara Rimm-Kaufman, Curry School of

Education, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

www.responsiveclassroom.org

1. The social curriculum is as important as the academic

curriculum.

2. How children learn is as important as what they learn: process and content go hand in

hand.

3. The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.

21st Century skill: collaboration

4. There is a specific set of social skills that children need to learn

and practice in order to be successful academically and

socially: cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-

control (CARES).Assume nothing…teach everything!

5. Knowing the children we teach-individually, culturally, and developmentally-is as important as knowing the content we teach.

6. Knowing the families of the children we teach is as important

as knowing the children we teach .

7. How we, the adults at school, work together is as important as

our individual competence: lasting change begins with the

adult community.