An article about classroom charters, based on the study, was published in the August 1999 edition of Support for Learning.

The classroom charter is negotiated between pupils and teachers, and is a statement of the rights and responsibilities of every person in the group. It should be negotiated near the start of the year and if a rule isn't working, that rule should be looked at again. The charter is the property of the whole group, but the teacher is responsible for making sure it works - the rules are negotiable but their application is not.

The permissive approach advocates the teacher opening everything up for negotiation, but it is much more honest for the teacher to make it clear that they have certain values and that these are not up for negotiation. If you are sure that what you believe is correct then this is the only way. After all, the teacher has a responsibility to educate.

You need to decide what your own 'bottom-line' ground rules are, but these are mine, based on those of Brandes and Ginnis (1990):

1. We believe that everyone is responsible for their own actions.

2. We will help each other in every way. This means everyone working together for the good of the class and each person in it, including giving and receiving feedback, joint decision making, and support.

3. We believe in a policy of non-violence. Everyone has a right to live without verbal, physical or emotional abuse.

4. Everyone is a learner, whatever their role in the school.

5. We will aim for excellence in every aspect of learning.

6. We believe that everyone has a right to feel good about themselves and what they do.

Make it clear that while these are not up for negotiation, everything else is.

Negotiating the Curriculum

In the UK, it isn't possible to negotiate much of what is taught, because of the National Curriculum. It is, however, possible to negotiate how it is taught. All you need to do is talk to students about the different kinds of work they enjoy, and put some of their ideas into practice. It's important to ensure they experience a wide variety of different learning styles of course, but listen to what they enjoy and don't enjoy, and what they would like to do in the future. Most importantly, let your pupils know that what they say makes a difference, by acting upon their advice.

Example

Lesson Plan

This page gives a sample lesson plan. Obviously this needs to be adapted for different students, teachers, schools and times. I don't think its possible to take less than 50 minutes to an hour to do this properly though, and it's often worth taking an extra lesson to talk about rewards and sanctions separately. It all depends on the needs of the group.

This example is lifted directly from the study about classroom charters (see below).

One fifty-minute lesson is spent with the students in the school's conference room. We sit in a circle and I explain everything agreed to by the group will be acted upon but:

• some rules, national laws and whole school rules, cannot be negotiated; and
• remember you come to mathematics lessons to learn.

Pupils form random groups of four and have a pen and a large sheet of paper. They draw a large circle on the paper and inside the circle write everything they would like to be happening in a good mathematics lesson, outside the circle everything they would not like. Then everybody returns to the circle to discuss their ideas.

After this discussion the groups reform to think about the rules needed to make their ideal lessons happen. They are only allowed to put ‘Do' (positive) rules. If they have time, they put ideas for sanctions too.

The lesson finishes with a discussion of their rules, focussing on areas where all the groups agree and attempting to resolve areas where there is little agreement.

After the negotiation lesson I take all the sheets of paper and combine the rules to make the classroom charter. This is displayed in the classroom and a copy given to every pupil, their homework being to look at the charter and make sure it was as they had agreed, and let me know if it was not. So far no-one has asked for changes to be made.

Study

I wrote an essay about using Classroom Charters, click here to look at an HTML version.

ianhedleywork@yahoo.co.uk

This page last updated 22/11/2002.