Chapter 7: Building the Classroom Environment
There are three teachers of children: adults, other children, and their physical environment.
—Loris Malaguzzi
Opening Vignette: Building a Rainforest
Ms. McCoy’s first-grade classroom was abuzz with activity. Paper Toucans, Quezels, Araçari, and Parakeets peeked through bright green leaves hanging from the ceiling covered with the children’s handwritten rainforest facts. A waterfall spilled over the door frame and into a river flowing down the hallway teeming with tropical water animals and tree trunks that grew from the river’s edge. Frogs perched on fact-filled branches, identifying the amphibian species by name and offering more relevant details about its habitat. The rainforest represented a month of the children’s collective inquiry work as they prepared for the school’s upcoming curriculum fair.On this particular day, the children were spread out across the classroom in different clusters working on various phases of their last writing project before the curriculum fair. This week’s writing project included the creation of three-dimensional construction paper animal sculptures to complement their research paragraphs. Ms. McCoy sat on the carpet, conferencing with Stephen regarding his rough draft jaguar report, while Cory sat next to her looking through a book on alligators adding details to his graphic organizer. Eric sat nearby in the big rocking chair reviewing the rough draft paragraph the class had co-constructed about a Blue Morpho Butterfly. He periodically looks up from his draft to reread the model sentences and copy the spellings of some words.
Allie, Travis, Amanda, and John are similarly occupied, sitting at a large table working on their rough drafts together. Each child is referring to books about their animal and adding bullet point facts to their graphic organizers. At a separate table, another group of children works with plates of glue, paint brushes, construction paper, and paper towel tubes to create animal sculptures. The children working on their sculptures had either finished their rough drafts and were waiting to conference with Ms. McCoy or they had finished publishing their informative paragraphs and were onto this week’s writing and art project. As Stephen finished reading and revising his draft, Ms. McCoy handed him a fancy leaf to publish his report on and scanned the room to check on the children’s progress. Ms. McCoy chuckled as she noticed Samantha and Tabitha sifting through the construction paper pieces they had dumped from the scrap box onto the floor searching for just the right colors for their sculptures. As Ms. McCoy continued glancing around the room, she smiled seeing that all the students were actively engaged with their project work.
Introduction
Productive classroom environments consistently invite learners to engage in curricular experiences in socially and emotionally meaningful ways. When learners feel comfortable in their classroom environment, they are emotionally primed to attend to the cognitive, physical, and social tasks expected of them. Learning environments are not static, and teachers hold a great deal of executive privilege in determining many aspects influencing the overall classroom environment. In the opening vignette, routines, materials, and instructional experiences shaped the first-grade classroom environment in tangible and intangible ways. The productive hum of children committed to accomplishing individual goals (i.e., their animal reports and sculptures) and collective goals (i.e., transforming their classroom into a rainforest for the curriculum fair) takes a lot of intentional and reflective planning on Ms. McCoy’s part. Trusting relationships (see Chapter 6) undergirded the freedom the children experienced in the classroom to sit in different places and move freely about the room to gather supplies and accomplish their goals.
Classroom climate is composed of the “intellectual, social, emotional, and physical environments” students occupy (Ambrose et al., 2010, p. 170). The individuals, learning opportunities, and materials make up the classroom environment and influence the prevailing classroom climate. Although the classroom climate may be intangible, it is nonetheless keenly felt by individuals as they enter different environmental spaces. Classroom and school climates may feel warm and welcoming, cold and unfriendly, or somewhere in between. Teachers, administrators, and staff all contribute to the overarching tone experienced by children, families, and visitors. Positive classroom climates feel safe and welcoming. Teachers use strengths-based perspectives to nurture classroom learning communities and establish an environment in which children feel comfortable taking risks as they acquire new skills and learn new concepts (Niemer, 2024).
Building a positive classroom climate takes time and requires a multifaceted approach. In establishing a warm learning environment, educators attend to the physical components shaping the learning environment, the materials integrated into the space, and the specific instructional routines and practices used to facilitate children’s learning. Positive classroom climates benefit teachers and students. Teachers experience greater joy and less emotional fatigue; students experience greater academic gains, positive peer relationships, and enhanced self-esteem (Opiola, Kamp, & Alston, 2020).
The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework offers a set of guidelines for educators to consider when designing and facilitating classroom learning communities (UDL, 2024). UDL is grounded in an understanding that environments should be designed to flexibly meet the needs of all individuals in a community. For example, as an environmental feature, ramps support people using strollers, rolling suitcases, wheelchairs, and bikes, while individuals without wheels simultaneously navigate the same environmental space. Similarly, UDL focuses on ensuring learning environments are created to enhance learners’ access and agency within the learning community. UDL guidelines present educators and learners with a set of concrete suggestions that can be “mixed and matched according to specific learning goals” (UDL, 2024, p. 8). To promote learners’ access and agency, UDL recommends designing learning environments that attend to creating pathways that leverage multiple means of (1) engagement, (2) representation, and (3) action and expression. Revised in 2024, the current UDL framework emphasizes children as critical members of the learning community and honors “learners’ varied, intersecting identities and the many strengths and assets they bring to the learning environment” (UDL, 2024, p. 10).
The ecology of the classroom is another conceptual lens for considering how environmental stimuli influence individuals’ experiences, responses, and emotional comfort within a shared learning space (Reutzel & Jones, 2013). The ecology of the classroom includes the materials, individuals, and routines and practices that make up the learning environment. Individuals shift how they behave and interact within the environment as stimuli and resources change. Tangible and intangible elements contribute to the overall feel of a classroom environment. Educators use the physical environment, instructional practices, routines and procedures, and community-building practices to support children’s positive interactions and relationships. These aspects work together and influence the prevailing classroom climate (see Figure 7.1). The heart in the center of the graphic represents positive trusting relationships within the learning community as discussed in Chapter 6.
In this chapter, we will
describe environmental classroom design practices that promote productive learning communities (7.1);
consider the materials used in the classroom environment to support social and emotional development (7.2); and- discuss norms, procedures, and routines for supporting children’s meaningful engagement (7.3).
7.1 Physical Environment
One of the primary tasks of a classroom teacher is classroom setup and design. The main objectives for designing a classroom environment is to create a space that is (1) comfortable, (2) conducive to learning, and (3) prepared to flexibly respond to students’ distinct needs. The physical environment includes all the tangible environmental elements that define the classroom, including the furniture, walls, curricular materials, and supplies. How an educator decides to use the tangible elements within the classroom influences how individuals will engage within the space. Martin (2020) explains: “Classroom spaces support students in a variety of ways so they can remain focused on their learning with minimal distractions. With intentional planning these strategically designed areas can help foster social, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive growth and well-being for all learners” (p. xxi).
The physical space includes both permanent and conditional environmental features. Permanent features are fixed or not easily changed aspects of the environment. Conditional features are moveable (even removable) elements in the classroom. Creating an effective classroom environment necessitates finding the right balance between the physical attributes occupying a classroom space and the learning community’s goals. As teachers and children work together, the classroom spaces change over time depending on instructional goals, desired interactions, and individual needs (Proctor, 2023).
The physical environment can enhance or inhibit children’s positive engagement in the classroom. One way to think about how to leverage the different physical spaces in a classroom is to identify the varying purposes and functions of different elements and consider how members of the learning community will use the space. Preschool, kindergarten, and primary-grade classrooms are arranged differently to meet a variety of instructional, practical, and developmental needs. How classrooms are designed reveals much about how children are expected to engage as learners. Table 7.1 poses a set of basic design questions educators should consider when setting up a learning space.
| Physical Environment Design Questions |
|---|
|
Educators may encounter a number of evaluative tools that focus on the physical environment, such as the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS-3) (Harms, Clifford, & Cryer, 2014) or the Infant Toddler Environment Rating Scale (ITERS-3) (Harms et al., 2006). These tools are helpful for reflecting on how varying aspects of the classroom environment and teacher-child interactions are supporting young children’s development across cognitive, physical, social, and emotional domains. Both scales consider how teachers leverage environmental elements to support children’s growth.
Early Learning Classrooms
Children in early learning classrooms are naturally curious and want to interact with their peers and explore their environment in personally meaningful ways. The significance of children’s social and emotional development becomes increasingly apparent as their mobility and active engagement within the classroom community grows. When the teacher-to-child ratio is lower in early learning communities, children can gain increased autonomy and independence. When class sizes grow, however, children have more social interactions with peers. These interactions create opportunities for children to form a wider circle of friends and gain experience with diverse personalities. The expansion of children’s social circles is a critical component of their social development and fosters skills, such as cooperation and empathy. Larger group sizes provide more opportunities for children to learn about their emotions and to develop self-regulation skills as they navigate their learning environment and respond to different situations (e.g., turn taking, sharing materials and spaces, understanding wait times, and sharing adult attention).
As children develop cognitively, physically, socially, and emotionally, the physical spaces supporting children’s engagement in early learning communities also change. Obvious features, like the size and height of chairs and tables increase to align with children’s physical growth. The need for nap mats disappear as children’s mental and physical stamina increases. As children become more socially aware and begin to see themselves as members of a larger learning community, whole- and small-group areas evolve to support children’s developing interests in playing, learning, talking, and interacting together.
Accordingly, early learning environments typically include a carpeted area for circle time and a variety of center areas to promote small-group play and learning. Conceptualizing the preschool classroom with defined spaces that balance areas of hard and soft, loud and quiet, wet and dry, allows teachers to meet the different instructional and developmental needs of learners. Within these spaces, teachers integrate flexible grouping opportunities, while creating space for individual, paired, small-group, and whole-group explorations and learning experiences. As teachers set up the learning environment, they confront the realities of defined spaces as some features are fixed and thereby inform how certain areas will be used. For example, a water table might define the wet area in the room and should probably be located near a sink and over a hard flooring surface.
Determining how to leverage the different physical features in a classroom to meet practical purposes may be one of the most challenging aspects teachers confront when setting up a learning environment for the first time. Sometimes it is difficult to anticipate all the ways that members of the learning community will navigate the learning space. Therefore, remaining cognizant of how the physical environment is influencing a child’s actions is an important first step to take when thinking about how to address undesirable behaviors. Although placing the wet table on the tiled surface may seem like a simple decision, if the table impedes children’s access to the bathroom a different problem may emerge. Pausing to reevaluate how the larger physical features are affecting an individual’s navigational flow through the learning community is a valuable practice. Flexibly modifying the environment to enhance navigational patterns is a proactive strategy to support all learners’ engagement.
Educators can use a number of strategies to assist children’s navigation of classroom environments. Environmental markers can be integrated before learners enter an environment in anticipation of the navigational supports they might need. These markers can also be added when stronger cues are necessary to mitigate budding problematic behaviors. For example, labels for cubbies, spots for lining up, and stop and go signs on tricycle paths are material guides that scaffold how learners interact with their environment. The goal of scaffolding children’s interactions with materials is to prompt and teach specific behaviors so learners are able to successfully navigate their environment. Thus, environmental markers might be removed from an environment once learners have internalized the flow patterns and expectations.
Primary-Grade Classrooms
As children move into the primary grades, classroom environments change to emphasize instructional goals. Although instructional experiences should still engage children in playful learning interactions, the spaces children use to conduct their learning experiences become more specialized to support children’s learning in different content areas. Primary-grade teachers continue to use different classroom spaces to support flexible grouping practices. Individual, partner, small-group, and whole-group learning areas are created using visual and physical fixtures. How the desks or tables are arranged influences how children will interact with each other and the teacher during instruction. Desk clusters and tables typically promote collaborative work, peer discussion, and learner-centered classroom practices, whereas desks aligned in rows generally support teacher-centered practices. In reality, teachers flexibly arrange desks in a variety of grouping patterns—such as some desks in a small circle and some desks clustered together—to meet the diverse instructional needs of learners.
As illustrated in the opening vignette, Ms. McCoy and her first graders used the small carpeted area with a rocking chair as a space to accomplish a variety of learning tasks and experiences. This classroom design offered children a variety of seating options and working surfaces to support their engagement as they focused on meeting their instructional goals. As with early learning environments, primary-grade teachers can also incorporate physical elements that balance the environmental space for learners. Intentionally adding some soft seating options, such as beanbags, exercise balls, chairs with wiggle seats, and carpeting complements the hard chairs and desks found in classroom spaces. These features soften the environment and offer members in the learning community different places and spaces to engage in their work. Teaching children when and how to take advantage of the different features in the classroom, also takes some planning. Introducing features like exercise ball seating and wiggle seats can be introduced over time. Teaching children how and when to use more permanent features (e.g., the carpet, rocking chair, pencil sharpener, and sink with a water fountain) will need to be addressed early on.
Analyzing Environmental Factors
Ultimately, effective classroom designs need to meet learners’ needs. Each learner will join the community with varied and preferred ways of being in the world. The classroom environment has a profound impact on how children engage as members of the learning community. In fact, the classroom environment can influence a child’s capacity to self-regulate (Hoffman, 2015). The MEHRIT Centre (2023) identifies a number of environmental stress variables teachers should consider to support children’s well-being in the classroom. Some environmental stimuli overwhelm the senses and make it difficult for children to self-regulate. Harsh lighting, noises, smells, visual clutter, and temperatures can make it difficult for learners to engage (Shanker, 2016). For example, when the temperature of the classroom becomes too hot or too cold, individuals may find it difficult to remain focused. An extreme temperature difference may be easily noticed by everyone; however, not all stimuli will be as easily recognized nor affect all individuals. Understanding what is contributing to a specific child’s dysregulation will not always be obvious. For instance, a child who is sensitive to sensory input may become dysregulated when their bare legs touch the itchy fibers on the carpet during circle time.
Another way to conceptualize the spaces defining a classroom environment is to consider how different areas of the classroom promote different energy states for learners. Shanker (2016) encourages educators to think of different classroom spaces as microclimates. Microclimates are intentionally designed to support children’s “up- or down-regulation” (MEHRIT Centre, 2023, p. 1). Microclimates recognize that throughout the school day children can learn to identify and use different environmental contexts to self-regulate and accomplish specific goals. Children’s attention and energy states ebb and flow in response to internal and external conditions. Creating spaces within the classroom environment that meet learners’ varying energy needs supports positive learning communities. One way to think about these microclimates is as respite and active energy spaces. Offering learners opportunities to access these spaces throughout the school day as they transition into and out of different learning experiences help children identify and leverage environmental spaces that support their productive engagement.
Respite Spaces
Respite spaces draw on stillness and focused work to quiet and relax the mind. Respite microclimates may be small or large and work for many children at the same time or serve individuals as needs arise. Respite areas, like a classroom library or a sensory space, might include softer, flexible seating options that allow individuals to settle into more relaxed body positions. Some respite spaces explicitly teach children to think about how the features of a space can help them regulate their emotions when they are feeling moments of stress. Designating specific areas of the room as calming or respite areas creates microenvironments available to all students and is an example of how UDL principles can be seamlessly integrated into practice. Such spaces intentionally communicate to children they are encouraged to notice how they are feeling and to exercise agency to move to areas of the classroom aligned with their stimulation needs. Subsequent chapters will further inform the use of respite spaces for children who need strategic and intensive interventions.
Active Energy Spaces
Active energy spaces support motion and tactile interactions to focus and thoughtfully engage the mind. Just as respite spaces calm the mind, active energy spaces stimulate the mind. Active energy spaces can occur in large spaces (e.g., movement studios, playgrounds) or occupy smaller areas (e.g., sand tables, blocks center, or science exploration stations). These spaces encourage learners to interact with materials or individuals to accomplish their learning or play goals. Active energy spaces can promote gross motor or fine motor experiences. Using environmental spaces to encourage children to move their bodies in big and small ways, works to refresh and actively engage learners’ brains (Jensen, 2005). Educators can intentionally arrange the physical areas in the classroom to encourage purposeful movement to sustain learners’ engagement. For example, integrating hands-on learning centers that children rotate through during the school day builds in regular movement and offers children different ways to use their body (e.g., standing at the science exploration table, then sitting at a low table to play a letter-matching game, followed by working on the floor with tangrams).
Pause and Consider: The Classroom Environment
Pause to remember a classroom environment where you felt comfortable. What aspects of the space made it feel welcoming or relaxing?Now think about a classroom environment that felt uncomfortable to you. What aspects of the space made it feel wearing or taxing?
7.2 Materials in the Environment
Once the large physical features are in place and the classroom arrangement has been selected, additional materials can be integrated into the space according to their purpose and use in the classroom. These purposes can be aesthetic, utilitarian, instructional, or all of the above. For example, integrating a fish tank or digital views of outside landscapes offer members of the learning community a visual resting spot as they listen and engage with others. Additionally, tropical plants like pothos or snake plants promote a sense of calm. Plants can also offer children an opportunity to learn about plant life or offer children opportunities to responsibly contribute to the learning community by taking turns caring for the plants. Environmental affordances also influence the materials teachers decide to integrate into the classroom. In the case of the plants, environmental parameters including the amount of space and natural sunlight will influence the teacher’s decision.
Teachers integrate additional supplies and materials over the course of a school year to support children’s development and continued acquisition of content knowledge and skills. Materials in the environment can serve as academic or social and emotional supports. To increase learning opportunities, early educators utilize many hands-on materials, such as blocks, dramatic play items, art supplies, calendar visuals, and content area manipulatives (e.g., unifix cubes, globes, maps, alphabet letters, magnifying glasses). Additionally, teachers integrate social and emotional supports, such as weighted blankets, for sensory regulation, fidget toys for tactile stimulation, and noise-canceling headphones to minimize distracting or unsettling auditory inputs.
Making Materials Available to Children
Learning environments change according to learning goals, student interests, inquiry lines, units of study, and developmental appropriateness. Diverse materials can be used to support learners’ vocabulary development, enhance understanding, and promote autonomy. Teachers and children influence the diversity of materials integrated into the classroom. For example, children might bring in leaves and acorns from the playground, and teachers can leverage these items to initiate an exploration of fall. Or children could bring in photos of their family to decorate classroom spaces and serve as caring reminders of home. Likewise, teachers integrate materials into the classroom environment to support children’s learning and engagement. Loose parts, household items, and other objects support concept development. For example, when learning about simple machines, teachers might introduce materials such as pulleys, wheels, inclined planes, and screws. How teachers decide to invite children into material explorations can also support children’s engagement. For example, when literacy materials (e.g., books, paper, notecards, markers) are positioned so that children can readily access these resources during play, research shows children’s language and social literacy interactions increase in complexity and duration (Reutzel & Jones, 2013).
Educators make intentional decisions about when and how to make materials available to learners. Children can be overwhelmed by too many choices and the environment can quickly become cluttered if too many materials are in use at one time. Accordingly, a teacher might begin the school year with only wooden blocks and animals in the block center. As the year progresses, they might add the following: Lego™, soft blocks, bristle blocks, magnetic blocks, ramps, and cars depending on children’s readiness and interest. Likewise, teachers also make decisions that limit children’s access to particular materials or spaces in the room. In an early learning classroom, a teacher may close a center for cleaning or remove liquid glue from the art station in favor of glue sticks. In primary-grade contexts, science exploration boxes and associated nonfiction literature might rotate thematically depending on units of study. Adjusting the materials in the learning environment keeps things novel and ensures that learners remain interested in a familiar context.
Pause and Consider: Intentional Selection of Materials
Considering How Materials Are Used
When materials are added to the learning environment, teachers make plans to support children’s interactions with materials in appropriate and safe ways. This scaffolding process requires educators to take time to introduce the new material and guide children on how and when to use the resource. Scaffolding might also include an opportunity for the children to express their reaction to the material and ask questions as they interact with the new resources. When introducing new materials, it is also important to remember that many materials may have more than one purpose. Teachers and learners may define “appropriate” use of materials differently and “appropriate” use may change depending on the context. For example, a plastic straw can be used in various ways, most obviously children will use a straw to drink juice or milk; however, straws can also be used as a math manipulative, a tool for an art project, or an open-ended tool in a maker station. Because materials can be used in a variety of ways, how a child is expected to use a material may need to be defined and scaffolded.
Children learn how to use materials in different environmental contexts through explicit teaching and implicit learning. Implicit learning occurs naturally because children and individuals are always acquiring knowledge about how a space “works” through observation and experience. This type of learning is both developmentally and contextually dependent. Although children learn a lot about how to use materials implicitly, we cannot assume all children understand how to use all of the materials within a classroom community. Children may need support learning how to share, waiting for a turn, or deciding when and where they can use a particular material. When something goes awry with how children are interacting with materials (and each other) in the classroom, teachers’ response (or lack of response) to children also sends a message about how they should continue to engage in that space.
Vignette: Whose Pot Is It?
In this vignette, the children are gaining important understandings about how people in their environment interact with each other and the materials. Stephanie’s response signals her dissatisfaction, and Alexa is learning implicitly that when she takes something someone else is using, they may become upset. Mr. Josh entered into the children’s play with a calm presence and with a problem-solving question. He is focused on modeling problem-solving language to help children navigate toward a satisfactory solution and build agency for solving problems in the future.
Using Materials to Shift the Atmosphere
Children’s senses are always taking in and processing stimuli that can either promote or inhibit engagement and a sense of calm (Shanker, 2016). By leveraging tangible and intangible elements in the physical environment, teachers can create a change in the atmosphere. Teachers can intentionally engage children’s senses to support their attention and engagement by adjusting a variety of environmental resources. For example, turning off the lights as children come in from recess sends a calming signal to the brain and helps children transition from a highly active large motor space to a smaller classroom context. Similarly, playing nature soundscapes or soft music as children work can help them transition and settle into a productive focus. Using the smartboard to project an image of a fireplace can also promote a sense of calm.
Conversely, some elements of a classroom environment may be overstimulating and impede learners’ engagement. Physical characteristics influencing the atmosphere include smells, auditory elements, and the overall visual aesthetics of the classroom. For example, while music can support engagement, some children may find the integration of music too distracting and need to work in quiet to accomplish their goals. Scents can be especially tricky because once a teacher is acclimated to a smell, it goes unnoticed. Plug-ins, infusers, and perfumes, however, can trigger headaches and, in some cases, allergic reactions. In the opening vignette, Ms. McCoy’s classroom was becoming visually cluttered as the children added more projects to their rainforest. In fact, after the curriculum fair was over and the children began taking projects home, the class seemed to relax a bit and the children noted it was nice to be able to see their walls again.
Classroom environments naturally ebb and flow. At times, classrooms may become highly stimulating, and being aware of and responding by leveraging other environmental supports can help children navigate through environments that might otherwise become overwhelming. Therefore, it is important to be mindful of children’s responses to the environmental stimuli and adjust as needed.
Vignette: Counting Bears on Vacation
Ms. Elena is an early educator in a preschool classroom with four-year-old children. They have had many activities using math manipulatives, such as counting bears, multicolored chain links, and unifix cubes. One child, Hunter, is drawn to the counting bears. He has regularly been putting them in his mouth, holding them between his cheek and gums. Hunter has other strong sensory preferences, and the bears seem impossible to resist. Ms. Elena has tried multiple strategies. She moved tables around so that Hunter would be further from the bin of bears. Then she moved the math manipulatives to a less accessible location and brought the bears out only during math time.Nonetheless, Hunter continues to take the bears and put them in his mouth. The other children are reacting negatively, complaining that the bears have been in Hunter’s mouth and that even if they have been washed, they do not want to touch them. Ms. Elena has even offered Hunter a chew necklace, as an alternative, but he prefers the bears. Ms. Elena knows that using math manipulatives is a quality practice. However, there seems to be a social cost for Hunter when using these materials. For this reason, Ms. Elena decides to send the bears on a vacation to another class, thereby removing the counting bears from her classroom learning environment, at least temporarily.
This vignette illustrates how the counting bears, one of the materials in the classroom, presented a problem for the learning community. Ms. Elena’s reflections helped her decide what materials to utilize to support children’s learning. Her reflections also reveal how environmental conditions affect relationships across the community. Aware of the complex interplay, Ms. Elena intentionally modified the learning environment by rearranging and substituting materials to see if Hunter’s responses changed. She used her knowledge of child development and developmentally appropriate practices to analyze conditions in the classroom to support all children’s positive social engagement. Understanding the purpose, functionality, and individuals at play in this scenario, Ms. Elena intentionally responded to the problem with compassion and preserved a positive environmental climate.
Pause and Consider: Using a Problem-Solving Approach with Materials
Reflect on Ms. Elena’s problem-solving approach. What do you notice about the decisions she made regarding the materials she elected to include in the environment? How did her problem-solving approach remain focused on aspects of the environment she could control? How does her approach support all children’s engagement, avoid a power struggle with Hunter, and preserve her self-efficacy as an educator?Think of another example of when a child’s interactions with a particular material might need to be strategically addressed. How could you apply a problem-solving approach that similarly preserves the child’s engagement as a valued member of the classroom?
7.3 Norms, Routines, and Procedures
Norms, routines, and procedures guide learners’ interactions in school environments. They keep children safe and allow children to anticipate patterns of behavior. Schools often present families with student handbooks that contain policies articulating behavioral expectations. Oftentimes, teachers do not have control of the policies established by governing bodies overseeing their teaching context. Teachers, however, typically do have control of communicating, designing, and establishing classroom community rules or norms, routines, and procedures.
Establishing Classroom Norms
When teachers work with children to develop classroom norms, they share ownership of the classroom space and model democratic principles. A number of guidelines apply when working with learners to establish classroom norms. As teachers and children collaborate to develop the classroom community norms, they take time to understand what the guiding norms mean and what they look like in action. Table 7.2 offers guidelines for how to design a set of norms to support interactions in the learning community. Norms are an anchor for classroom practices and can be referred to when working to problem-solve and resolve community conflicts (see Figures 7.2 and 7.3 for a preschool example and a primary-grade example).
| Guidelines for Establishing Classroom Norms |
|---|
|
Episodic, Transitional, and Instructional Routines
In addition to the policies established by districts and the norms created in the classroom, routines establish a predictable rhythm to the school day. Routines follow a set of procedures to accomplish a task. In the classroom, routines guide students’ engagement. They can alleviate stress for learners and allow them to anticipate what is ahead. Daily schedules are an example of a routine that outlines the day for students. Schedules offer children a way of looking across the entire day to anticipate when they will be engaging in different activities. Making these schedules visible and building in time to explicitly discuss the sequence of the day’s events, provides a meaningful structure for children to rely on. Figures 7.4A and 7.4B offer examples of daily schedules for young learners in preschool and primary-grade contexts. Daily schedules can be flexibly designed to reflect different events. For example, using Velcro strips or pocket charts that allow regular events to be added and removed from the schedule as needed (e.g., indoor recess when it rains or insert rotating resource times like art and music). Modifying the schedule offers children a tangible view of how aspects of the school day may change slightly from day to day, while overall elements like lunch, resource time, and dismissal will typically remain the same.
Long Description for Figure 7.4
Two side-by-side charts outline preschool and primary daily schedules. The preschool schedule begins at 9:00 a m with arrival, followed by a morning meeting, learning centers and small groups, snack and story time, outdoor play, lunch, story time and quiet activities, nap or rest time, art or music activity, outdoor play, and goodbye at 3:00 p m. The primary schedule starts at 8:30 a m with arrival, morning work, language arts, lunch, recess, specials, mathematics, social studies and science, and ends with dismissal at 3:20 p m. Each schedule reflects age-appropriate structure and priorities.
Routines can be used to support transitional, episodic, or instructional expectations. In this textbook, we define transitional routines as procedures that typically support the entire class and help students smoothly shift from one activity to the next. We define episodic routines as procedures that typically support regularly occurring tasks or activities students use during specific moments of the day to support specific actions. We define instructional routines as those practices and procedures that support children’s academic engagement and teach strategies for regulating emotions and energy states. Transitional, episodic, and instructional routines happen regularly and establish predictable patterns of behavior to guide learners’ engagement. Table 7.3 offers examples of the different types of routines and procedures experienced by educators and learners. Routines often happen in a sequence or overlap. Integrating routine practices throughout the day is essential for ensuring that the day runs smoothly for teachers and learners.
| Transitional Routines | Episodic Routines | Instructional Routines |
|---|---|---|
|
|
|
Pause and Consider: Emergency Routines
Emergency preparedness is a necessary component for all early childhood programs. It is important to teach emergency routines, even though they are, fortunately, rarely needed. Emergency routines help prepare children, teachers, and others in the school community to respond so that everyone remains safe in dangerous conditions. Examples of emergency routines include fire drills, bus evacuations, and lockdown or shelter in place drills. For young children, discussing and practicing these routines can be stressful. Loud alarms that tell a community to either take cover or evacuate the building can be scary and hurt sensitive ears. When introducing children to emergency routines, it is important to ensure that information is presented calmly and at a time when there is enough time to walk through the whole routine and respond to all of the children’s questions. Describing emergency drills too quickly or in a foreshadowing manner can leave children with misunderstandings about what is happening or going to happen when they hear the alarm. It is important to intentionally communicate to children that the actions they are practicing are designed to keep everyone in the community safe. Also, be sure to use reassuring language and be careful not to sensationalize or catastrophize the consequences of failing to follow the routine expectations.
What routines do you follow to prepare young children for practicing emergency procedures?
Reflect on the language and tone you use when introducing or practicing the emergency routine. How does your language communicate safety and build trust?
Teaching Routines and Procedures
Carefully designing and teaching children classroom procedures and routines helps learning communities thrive. Explicit teaching of specific routines helps children anticipate the actions of others and engage in socially appropriate ways. Teachers describe, model, and practice procedures and routines with children to help them internalize expectations. Narrative stories, visual cues, songs, chants, and children’s books can all be leveraged to help children understand how they can engage throughout the school day. For example, a picture poster that illustrates how children should wash their hands can help learners develop automaticity with this specific routine and promotes autonomy and agency in the classroom. Teachers can also use chants, songs, echoes, and movements to introduce and reinforce routines (see Table 7.4).
| Class Chants, Songs, Echoes, and Movements |
|---|
| Call and response chants, songs, echoes, and movements build a collective sense of belonging. Different chants and movements can be integrated throughout the school day. As children learn the different responses, a sense of community cohesiveness develops.
Chants can:
Chants can be teacher-created or children can work together to come up with their own special chants. Take a few moments to see how chants and songs are integrated across the grades in these examples: |
Social Narratives
Educators use short, focused narratives to explicitly address and teach specific routines and behavioral responses. Handwashing, fire drill, and clean-up routines are examples of behavioral routines that need to be explicitly taught to young learners and revisited as necessary as children move to new contexts with slightly different procedures. Social narratives can also explore with children their emotions and teach them what to do when they confront a situation and they begin to feel frustrated, sad, or overexcited. Social narratives exist in a variety of formats, including small books, presentation slides, narrative-style posters, and even songs. Numerous examples of social narratives are available online for teachers to either use directly or modify to meet their learning context. Teachers can also write their own social narratives to help students learn routines. Table 7.5 shares strategies for crafting your own social narratives.
| Write Your Own Social Narrative |
|---|
|
Vignette: Swing Safely
This year Mr. Cooper’s second graders love to use the swings during recess. The children have worked hard to independently master swinging on their own. They are now very competent at kicking their legs to use the in and out rhythm necessary to propel themselves high into the air. However, the children’s newly developed skill is beginning to worry Mr. Cooper. He is specifically concerned about two things. First, children who are not swinging are coming too close to children on the swings; someone is going to get kicked. Remembering to keep a safe distance is particularly problematic for the younger children sharing the playground space with his class. Second, he does not want children to begin jumping off the swings.To help keep everyone safe, Mr. Cooper decides to write a social narrative with his students. To create the Swing Safely social narrative he begins by sharing his concerns with his class and suggests that they work together to create a social narrative to share with the younger grades. The next day, he takes photos of the children swinging and embeds them into the story. As he takes the photos, one of his students suggests putting out bright traffic cones to designate a swing safety zone. Mr. Cooper integrates the child’s idea and includes a photo with the cones, a child swinging, and a child running behind the cones in the story.
The next day, Mr. Cooper presents a sequenced slidedeck with the pictures from the previous day. Mr. Cooper also added a few sentence starters to keep the students focused during the shared writing process. As a whole class, they work together to compose simple statements to keep everyone safe on the playground. After working together to draft the story, he plans to have his students share the social narrative with the students in the lower grades.
In this vignette, Mr. Cooper proactively recognizes a new routine will need to be implemented to keep children safe. In constructing the social narrative with his students, he explicitly articulates his concerns, identifies the problems he foresees, and invites the students to help him create a routine that will keep everyone safe. The vignette also models a problem-solving approach that nurtures community and supports children’s active engagement in working toward solutions together.
The routine practices that educators leverage to influence how learners interact with each other and with the materials in the classroom change in response to individual and learning community needs. Instructional routines interact with other environmental elements and influence the overall classroom climate. Once routines and procedures are established, teachers and children can turn their attention to accomplishing academic and social and emotional learning goals. Even when educators explicitly teach routines, however, a particular routine may not work well. If a routine is not helping individuals engage in a meaningful and productive way, then the routine may need to be modified. Routines are used to support children’s active and meaningful engagement, not to control or punish. When a routine is not working, strive to establish a new routine. Use a different call and response, line up in a different place, or try a different social narrative. In the next section, we explore additional instructional practices to support children’s social and emotional well-being and to promote a positive sense of belonging for all members in the learning community.
Social and Emotional Routines
Taking time to intentionally develop practices with children that support individual and community well-being is a valuable educational component. Regularly integrating specific social and emotional learning and well-being routines enhances the overall climate experienced in the classroom. Teaching children how to identify their feelings, articulate their feelings to others, and use strategies to regulate their emotions is an important practice for promoting positive classroom communities. Building in time to explicitly talk and teach about emotions validates the emotional fluctuations all humans experience. Introducing and practicing strategies for recognizing and regulating emotions is an important practice. In this section, we discuss several routine practices teachers may integrate to nurture children’s social and emotional expressions and promote positive engagement.
Children’s Literature with Social and Emotional Themes
A practice for supporting children’s positive engagement in the classroom is through the use of books that emphasize how children may be feeling when confronting new or challenging situations. Incorporating children’s literature with social and emotional themes is a common practice across early childhood education contexts. Children’s books like Isabel and Her Colores go to School (Alessandri, 2021), The Day You Begin (Woodson, 2018), and All Are Welcome Here (Penfold, 2018) reassure children navigating their first days of school. In these examples, children’s emotions are clearly articulated and positive messages of belonging are threaded throughout the story. Children’s books also help children learn how to manage and work through frustration when striving to accomplish a goal. For example, Jabari Tries (Cornwall, 2020) and The Magical Yet (DiTerlizzi, 2020) empathetically explore how it feels to be excited and then increasingly upset when the effort we are expending to accomplish a goal is not rewarded. The National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations offers teachers a searchable database of children’s books focused on supporting children’s expressions, emotions, and engagement. Table 7.6 offers suggestions for how to select and use children’s books to support children’s explorations related to their social and emotional development.
| Using Literature to Support Children’s Social and Emotional Development |
|---|
|
Reading high-quality children’s books aloud is an easy way to initiate conversations with young learners about the diverse emotions they will feel as human beings living and working together in a community of learners.
|
Brain Breaks and Energizers
Learning takes energy. As children engage with new content, develop skills, and interact with others in the environment, they are working hard to sustain attention, remain focused on their goals, and interact in meaningful ways. Intentionally building in brain breaks is another way to help children celebrate their efforts, relax from a previous experience, and get ready to move into a new activity. A plethora of brain break energizers are available online for teachers and young learners to enjoy. When you or another child in your class lead the brain break, the classroom community is strengthened.
Brain breaks and energizers offer another opportunity to engage in playful interactions with your learners that recognizes their efforts and celebrates their accomplishments. Additionally, at times, children’s endurance will either collectively or individually wane. When teachers notice children beginning to disengage in the learning experience (e.g., increased fidgeting, off-topic comments, putting one’s head down) it may be a signal that it is time for a break. Sometimes, a brain break offers enough stimulation that the class can reengage in a learning experience feeling refreshed, reenergized, and ready to learn. Other times, it will be necessary to use a brain break to shift out of a learning task completely and come back to it another day. Learning when to stop pushing children to remain engaged when their bodies are signaling they need a break is another important practice to support children’s social and emotional development.
Focused Breathing
Teaching children how to use focused breathing as a calming and coping strategy helps promote children’s emotional well-being. Focused breathing has widespread benefits for physical and mental health across ages and contexts (Obradović, Sulik, & Armstrong-Carter, 2021). Deep breathing helps the child regulate their body and mind (Hall, Kaduson, & Schaefer, 2002) and can be used in early learning environments to help children reduce their anxiety, tension, or frustration. For young children, bubble breathing and box breathing are particularly effective forms of controlled breathing. Teach children when and how to use focused breathing as a coping or relaxation strategy when they are in a state of calm. This ensures that they will be able to access the strategy more easily when they become overwhelmed. Bubble breathing uses a technique of deep breathing to blow bubbles. If soap bubbles are not available or practical, young children can pretend to blow bubbles using a bubble wand without the soap, or even without a bubble wand. Box breathing, also referred to as square breathing, is another controlled breathing technique. Box breathing invites participants to breathe in for four beats, hold for four beats, breathe out for four beats, and hold again for four beats, essentially tracing through the four edges of a box. To help children internalize the controlled breathing practice, you can also integrate additional sensory cues. You can visually cue each phase by inviting children to engage in box drawing. Children can either draw a square with you in the air or actually trace the image of a square on a piece of paper. These additional tactile actions help children tangibly practice the controlled breathing method and experience the sense of calm deep breathing promotes.
Mood Meter (RULER Approach)
The mood meter is a tool used in the RULER approach to support children’s emotional intelligence, guiding them to recognize, understand, label, express, and regulate their responses to emotions. Developed at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence (Brackett et al., 2019), the RULER approach engages individuals in the practice of naming and exploring feelings to make sense of their emotions. Emotions fall along a continuum of high energy to low energy on the y-axis and from pleasantness to unpleasantness on the x-axis (see Figure 7.5). The tool offers children and adults ways to identify and name their feelings instead of being controlled by them.
Long Description for Figure 7.5
The board titled How are you feeling today? presents a mood grid made up of four colored quadrants at the center, each representing a different emotional state. The horizontal axis is labeled Pleasantness, and the vertical axis is labeled Energy. The red quadrant in the top left signifies high energy with low pleasantness, associated with emotions like anger or frustration. The yellow quadrant in the top right represents high energy with high pleasantness, reflecting happiness or excitement. The green quadrant in the bottom right indicates low energy with high pleasantness, relating to calmness or contentment. The blue quadrant in the bottom left shows low energy with low pleasantness, linked to sadness or fatigue. Various student-made portraits are displayed across the chart, each matched with the colors of their mood.
When learning communities use the mood meter to examine how emotions are a part of their everyday experiences, they create a space in which feelings are normalized. Brackett (2018) encourages teachers and students to use the five emotion skills of the RULER approach:
- Recognize our own emotions by attending to our thoughts and physiology, and recognize others’ emotions through facial expressions, body language, and vocal tones.
- Understand the causes of emotions and their influence on decisions, learning, and behavior.
- Label emotions with a nuanced vocabulary.
- Express emotions in accordance with cultural norms and social context.
- Regulate our emotions to achieve goals and well-being. (p. 16)
In Figure 7.5, we see an example of how children used the mood meter to articulate their emotions through color-coded self-portraits. Children can also create and use felt puppets in red, yellow, green, and blue to make sense of emotions they feel at different times. The emotional states delineated on the mood meter can be used to support students’ awareness of their emotions and their engagement levels during different types of learning experiences.
Pause and Consider: Mood Meter—Learning is a State of Mind
Watch this video, which gives a short overview of how the mood meter supports learning.
Video 7.1: Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence: Mood-congruent learning with the mood meter.
Source: Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
Video reflection: How do different moods affect thinking and learning? How can you modify the environment to capitalize on the different quadrants of the mood meter to engage learners?
Wish You Well (Conscious Discipline)
The daily “Wish You Well” routine is a Conscious Discipline (2024) practice designed to draw children into community by beginning each day intentionally recognizing peers who are present and peers who are absent (see Figure 7.6). The routine invites children to notice who is in the classroom and who is missing and then place photos of absent children in the center of a heart and pause to verbally wish them well. After wishing the absent children well, the children and teachers also turn and wish those who are present well, too. Simple chants or songs can be integrated into this routine to communicate well wishes. The message internalized by children is that we miss you when you are not here because you are an important part of our community.
Morning Meetings (Responsive Classroom)
The Responsive Classroom approach is a “professional development intervention comprised of a set of practical teaching strategies designed to support children’s social, academic, and self-regulatory skills” (Rimm-Kaufman et al., 2014, p. 569). The morning meeting is one of the Responsive Classroom practices designed to build “a community of caring and motivated learners” (Responsive Classroom, 2024a, para. 9). This daily community-building practice lasts between 20 and 30 minutes and includes four main components: greeting, sharing, group activity, and morning message. The components work together to integrate social and emotional learning with academic learning in a way that sparks children’s interests and gets them ready to learn.
During the greeting, each child is individually welcomed and recognized by name. The greeting is followed by moments of sharing during which children offer either spontaneous thoughts or thoughts related to a prompt (e.g., My favorite animal is … and this is why). As children listen to each other share their thoughts, they follow up with questions and make affirming connections. Engaging in the practice of greeting and sharing with each other daily works to ensure that all members of the learning community are seen and heard. Then everyone engages in a fun, energizing group activity to build community cohesiveness and develop academic and social competencies (e.g., singing a math rap to build automaticity with math facts or playing a round of 4-corners to discover children’s favorite things). Finally, the morning meeting includes a morning message. The morning message is tailored daily. The message can focus learners’ on their goals for the day (e.g., Today we will put on our astronaut suits and launch into our exploration of the planets). Or encourage children to learn more about each other (e.g., I wonder who in our classroom has a grandparent visiting from Venezuela? Who do you think it is? Put their name on a piece of paper and bring it with you to our morning meeting).
As children share and joyfully engage with each other during the morning meeting, they develop social and emotional skills related to listening, speaking, responding, problem-solving, noticing others, and anticipating individual and community needs (Responsive Classroom, 2024a). The morning meeting seeks to ensure that every child feels significant and that a sense of belonging permeates throughout the classroom environment. Consistently starting the day with a morning meeting helps establish a climate of trust in the classroom, in which individuals feel respected and ready to engage in meaningful learning (Responsive Classroom, 2023).
Pause and Consider: Morning Meeting, a Bright Way to Start Each Day
Class Meetings (Positive Discipline)
Class meetings are a core practice used by Positive Discipline learning communities to nurture, repair, and sustain positive peer relationships (Nelson, 2013). Class meetings create a space that recognizes problems will arise for children working, learning, and playing together. Class meetings follow a predictable problem-identifying and problem-solving agenda. Although teachers may bring a problem to the meeting, more authentic class meetings are generated by the students. The goal is for children to articulate the problem they are experiencing, discuss the problem with all of their peers, and collectively generate and decide on a solution. Class meeting routines focus on compliments and appreciations, following up on prior solutions, and creating space to share feelings without jumping to solutions. Problem-solving is embraced as a shared responsibility and is recognized as an important step before making future plans (Nelson, 2013). Class meetings can help individuals within the community work together to talk through difficult experiences and come to acceptable solutions.
Pause and Consider: Positive Discipline in Class Meetings
Watch this video of a second-grade class meeting using the class meeting routine.
Video 7.2: Positive discipline class meeting: Compliments & appreciations, problem solving.
Source: Julia Carey.
Video reflection: What do you notice about the language children use throughout the meeting? How does this environment work to establish trust and promote a warm climate?
Many other techniques and routines can support well-being. Finding routines that work for the children in your classroom community that celebrate each day as an opportunity to learn something new and to enjoy being together in school is essential. Thinking strategically about how you set up the classroom environment, leverage a variety of materials, and establish routines that promote a sense of belonging and minimize stressors, is foundational for creating a thriving classroom community.
Key Points
- The physical environment influences how children engage in the classroom.
- Teachers can design classroom spaces to support self-regulation and support children’s meaningful engagement.
- Materials in the classroom can be leveraged to promote positive engagement.
- Norms, routines, and procedures guide children’s engagement and help establish positive and productive learning communities.
Figures
Figure 7.1: Elements of classroom climate. Created by Leslie La Croix.
Figure 7.2: Classroom agreements example. “Classroom Rules 2” by Kulsoom Ayyaz for abbythepup.com is in the public domain (CC0).
Figure 7.3: Cocreated class norms. Photograph by Leslie La Croix.
Figure 7.4: Daily schedules (preschool and primary). (A) Preschool daily schedule. (B) Primary daily schedule. Created by Christine Pegorraro Schull in Canva.
Figure 7.5: Mood meter with children’s drawings and photos as representations. “The Many Faces of the Mood Meter” [photograph] by The Willows Community School, Culver City, CA. Reproduced and adapted with permission.
Figure 7.6: Wish you well board. Photographs by Kimberly Austin.
Images
Group of children sitting on the floor. “Children Sitting on the Floor” [photograph] by Pavel Danilyuk, Pexels.
Children working in different areas of the classroom. “A Montessori classroom in Indiana, USA” [photograph] by KJJS is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Children playing at a light table in a preschool classroom. “Light Table in Preschool Classroom” [photograph] by Meriwether Lewis Elementary School is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
Children interacting in a primary-grade classroom environment. “Second grade writing class” [photograph] by woodleywonderworks is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Elementary science center. “All About Rocks: Sedimentary, Igneous, Metamorphic” [photograph] by Tiffany Male, in Elementary Science Centers (February 15, 2021), Mrs. Male’s Masterpieces.
Preschool cars and ramp play. Photograph by Sara Miller
References
Alessandri, A. (2021). Isabel and her colores go to school. Sleeping Bear.
Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., & Lovett, M. C. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. Jossey-Bass.
Brackett, M. A. (2018). The emotional intelligence we owe students and educators. Educational Leadership, 76(2), 12–18. https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/the-emotional-intelligence-we-owe-students-and-educators
Brackett, M. A., Bailey, C. S., Hoffmann, J. D., & Simmons, D. N. (2019). RULER: A theory-driven, systemic approach to social, emotional, and academic learning. Educational Psychologist, 54(3), 144–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2019.1614447
Conscious Discipline. (2024). Shubert’s classroom: Wish well ritual back to Shubert’s classroom. https://consciousdiscipline.com/free-resources/shubert/shuberts-classroom/wish-well-ritual
Cornwall, G. (2020). Jabari tries. Candlewick.
DiTerlizzi, A. (2020). The magical yet. Hachette.
Hall, T. M., Kaduson, H. G., & Schaefer, C. E. (2002). Fifteen effective play therapy techniques. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 33(6), 515–522. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.33.6.515
Harms, T., Clifford, R. M., & Cryer, D. (2014). Early childhood environment rating scale, 3rd ed. (ECERS-3). Teachers College Press.
Harms, T., Cryer, D., Clifford, R. M., & Yazejian, N. (2006). Infant toddler environment rating scale, 3rd ed. (ITERS-3). Teachers College Press.
Hoffman, J. (2015, September 22). Paradigm revolution: Self-reg in schools and communities. MEHRIT Centre. https://self-reg.ca/paradigm-revolution-self-reg-in-schools-and-communities
Jensen, E. (2005). Teaching with the brain in mind. ASCD.
Martin, J. (2020). Strategic classroom design: Creating an environment for flexible learning. Heinemann.
MEHRIT Centre. (2023, May). Classroom environment tools. https://self-reg.ca/classroom-environment-tools
National Center for Pyramid Model Innovations. (n.d.). Scripted stories. https://challengingbehavior.org/document-category/scripted-story
Nelson, J. (2013). Positive discipline in the classroom. Penguin Random House.
Niemer, A. (2024). Behavior and intentional teaching. In G. Julian, B. Brown, A. Blums, C. Moon, J. Krishna, A. Niemer, N. Gill, & H. Lanoue (Eds.), Introduction into early childhood education, Section 10.4. https://openwa.pressbooks.pub/earlychildedu1/chapter/wa10-4
Obradović, J., Sulik, M. J., & Armstrong-Carter, E. (2021). Taking a few deep breaths significantly reduces children’s physiological arousal in everyday settings: Results of a pre-registered video intervention. Developmental Psychobiology, 63, e22214. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22214
Opiola, K., Kamp, B. L., & Alston, D. M. (2020). The effectiveness of training and supervising urban elementary school teachers in child-teacher relationship training: A trauma-informed approach. Professional School Counseling, 23 (1 part 2), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/2156759X198991
Penfold, A. (2018). All are welcome here. Random House.
Proctor, J. (2023). Teaching methods and practices. Online Consortium of Oklahoma. https://open.ocolearnok.org/teachingmethods
Responsive Classroom. (2023, June). What is morning meeting? https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/what-is-morning-meeting
Responsive Classroom. (2024a). Morning meeting: A powerful way to begin the day. https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/morning-meeting-a-powerful-way-to-begin-the-day
Responsive Classroom. (2024b). Morning meeting. https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/category/morning-meeting
Reutzel, D. R., & Jones, C. D. (2013). Designing and managing effective early childhood classroom environments. In D. R. Reutzel (Ed.), Handbook of research-based practice in early education (pp. 81–99). Guilford.
Rimm-Kaufman, S. E., Larsen, R. A., Baroody, A. E., Curby, T. W., Ko, M., Thomas, J. B., Merritt, E. G., Abry, T., & DeCoster, J. (2014). Efficacy of the Responsive Classroom approach: Results from a 3-year, longitudinal randomized controlled trial. American Educational Research Journal, 51(3), 567–603, https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831214523821
Shanker, S. (2016). Self-regulation: How to help your child (and you) break the stress cycle and successfully engage with life. Penguin.
Universal Design for Learning. (2024, February). UDL guidelines 3.0 full draft. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wWtjcHUKTnpa5ODcXfAGN9J0x6bc5mA-PCwtb7ZfaUA/edit
Woodson, J. (2018). The day you begin. Random House.
