Overview
Our School Wide Expectations
The RISE curriculum was created by a team of DVS employees working under the PBIS guidelines over a period of several months. The program is based on three main ideas:
- Children need to know what is expected of them.
- Children need to be directly taught the correct way to behave.
- The correct behavior needs to be encouraged and rewarded.
The main ideas are explored in more detail below.
To make this more consistent and to make it easier for the children to know the rules, we have come up with three main rules that will be in every area of our school environment. They are easy for the children to understand and easy for the teachers and staff to remember. Lucky’s Laws are :
Be Safe - Be Respectful - Be Responsible
Through these rules we can address any behavior in the classroom and help the children be respectful and responsible. You will see these rules posted in all of our classrooms and your children should become familiar with them very soon.
You may notice that these rules are very general and do not really explain HOW to stay safe, show respect, and be responsible. The explanations will be done using short lessons in the classroom. What we call Cool Tools will be used. Through the use of these short lessons or Cool Tools each rule will be explained and shown to the students. For example, being safe in the classroom may include:
Walking feet, Using quiet voices, Keeping your hands and feet to yourself
To teach, for example, walking feet, the teacher will explain why it is an important part of being safe. The children will be given specific examples of situations where walking will keep them safe and they will take part in activities which will allow them practice. Teachers will always show the children (model) what the correct behavior looks like so they become familiar with it. In this way, the children will have a very clear idea of the behaviors that are acceptable and expected in the classroom.
The Cool Tools are created by the teachers to teach any behavior in any setting. It is important to teach the behavior where you want it to take place. For example, teaching safe playground behavior needs to be taught on the playground. The same is true for lunch, bus behavior, and other parts of the child’s day. This way children make the connection between the behavior and the setting.
Once a behavior is taught, the child must be motivated to use the behavior in place of less appropriate behavior. In the RISE program that is done through positive feedback from the staff. This takes many different forms. If a child is following the rules a teacher may say, “I like the way you are staying safe by walking to line up.” This lets the child know that he is getting recognition for following the rules.
The staff may also remind or pre-correct the children on certain rules. “Before we line up to go outside, do we remember how to walk to stay safe?” This helps the children to remember the rules.
Another way is to use a reward system. The RISE reward system is based on tickets. As the teachers and staff see children acting appropriately they may give a child a ticket, one part goes home for parents to recognize, one goes to the classroom teacher. The tickets will be hung in the hallway for a grade level motivation. Once the grade level reaches their “ticket goal”. There is a grade level “reward”. This motivates the children to continue the appropriate behavior and to work to get the reward.
Slowly, the rewards become less frequent because the behavior becomes part of the classroom structure.
Finally
These three ideas put into place in all of our instructional areas will make a big impact on the children in our care. It will support children in their social development, keep our classrooms consistent in what we expect from the children, and most importantly give the children a safe environment in which to learn and grow.
Page last updated August 1, 2008