Rules Verses Agreements: Control or Facilitation

I've been reading a mutitude of blog entries and articles offering suggestions for the first days of school, classroom policies, and school and classroom rules.  In reflecting on myself as a practitioner, I know at some point in my career I stopped making the "rules" and allowed students to share in the process.  A bit further down the road in my evolution I abandoned the phrase "classroom rules" for "group agreements."  In both instances I experienced increased student cooperation and engagement.  My role had moved from one who wanted to control every experience in the classroom to one who wanted to facilitate the learning, as well as the social experiences in the classroom.  I found that through appropriate modeling I was more likely to influence student behavior and student learning.

I'm often asked, "So how did you do it?"  I used the same strategy I use today when modeling a lesson with students.  Basically, I begin by asking students a question like this:  "If I observe you experiencing success, what would it look like?.... sound like?   After students have time to self-reflect and record their thoughts, I solicite full group responses.  From there we create a chart with three major headings.  My goal is to get students to decide the three major categories with my guidance.  More specific sub-categories are bulleted beneath the three major headings.  Throughout this process I question and further probe students as a means to achieve more sophisticated responses and more sophisticated vocabulary  to represent their ideas.  An example of a chart I facilitated with a sixth grade class looked like this:

On-task * Engagement * Responsibility * Perseverance or sticks with it

Cooperation * Team work * Shares ideas * Listens to  others/each   other * Puts ideas on the table

Thinking * Solves problems * Asks questions * Reflects on work * Revises work