A few summers ago, I was starting a new grade level (5th) in a new district and spent a lot of time on Pinterest looking for some fun ideas for my fresh start. I decided to dig deeper into classroom rights and responsibilities and logical consequences. I figured that 5th graders would value being part of the process of establishing our norms, and, honestly, I wanted their insight. I was new to 5th graders and how they worked!
The process of creating these rights and responsibilities has been one of my favorite discussions with my class over the last couple of years. For students, thinking about what they want their rights to be is more powerful that just coming up with the standard class rules - be respectful, take turns, etc. Also, having this discussion at the beginning of the year gives me good insight about what the "personality" of my class is and what is important to them.
I start the activity by giving students a definition of "right" and "responsibility" and we brainstorm a quick list of rights and responsibilities they can think of that they have in their life. I usually start with a few examples, like they have the right to go to lunch every day, and the responsibility to get up and get ready in the morning. This quick step provides the foundation for the rest of the activity.
Next I have the students work with a partner to sort phrases into "rights" and "responsibilities" categories. Some are obvious, but others are natural discussion starters. Students innately assume they're supposed to glue the slips down, so I make sure they know to leave them unglued so they can change their minds if they want to. This is a great place to use a Kagan Structure like Rally Coach or Sage N Scribe (well, Sage N Sort, really!) to make sure that both partners are getting the chance to share their thinking.
Then we come together as a class to make a class list of rights and responsibilities. Definitely set aside plenty of board space for this! :) This is where things always get interesting! There's always something that some students think is a right, while some think is a responsibility. I love hearing them explain their thoughts. (Meanwhile, I'm creating the slightly crazy lists/arrows you see in the picture above!)
One thing that's been interesting to me is that every year there have been things that I added to the list intending them to be rights, but students strongly felt they were responsibilities, or vice versa. One of those this past year was "learn new things". I included it thinking students have the right to learn new things without classmates getting in the way of that. My class wholeheartedly believed that is was their responsibility to learn. Another one that has gone the opposite of what I expected was "ask for help", which I thought was a responsibility". Honestly, there's no right answer, and things can be on different lists from year to year. It's all about what each unique group of students thinks is important.
You can see on the lists above that there are arrows and stars. The arrows just show which rights and responsibilities go together. The stars are the ones that we as a class decided were the most important. I mostly let the class choose, but if I had one or two that I really wanted on the list, I made sure those made it on there.
I love this part because you get to see what awesome little people your students are. Both of the years that I've done this, my students have chosen "be different" and "have your own opinion" as two of our rights for the year. I just love that.
Once we've come up with the rights and responsibilities that are important to us, we make posters to hang on the wall. I've always used two pieces of chart paper, but it would be really easy to flip the page sideways and just use one.
Note: My school is a PBIS school, and we have the acronym SOAR for our schoolwide behavior expectations. Using sticky notes labeled "S", "O", "A", and "R", we matched the school norms to our responsibilities. You could easily do with with any acronym or anything else that many be in place schoolwide.
The last thing I do is have students work on their own to connect the rights and responsibilities and put them in their own words. This will help them really think about what the rights and responsibilities are going to look like in the classroom. I have students keep these so that they can be referred to throughout the year.
I use these rights and responsibilities along with logical consequences in my classroom, but the great thing is that they can fit into any classroom management system that you have!
If you're interested in trying out rights and responsibilities with your class click {HERE} or on the picture below.
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