Responsive Classroom
The goal of the Responsive Classroom® approach is to enable optimal
student learning. Developed by classroom teachers and continually
refined to meet schools’ needs, the Responsive Classroom approach is
based on the premise that children learn best when they have both
academic and social-emotional skills. The approach consists of
classroom and schoolwide practices for deliberately helping children
build academic and social-emotional competencies day in and day out,
year in and year out.
7 Guiding Principles of Responsive Classroom
• The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum.
• How children learn is as important as what they learn: Process and content
go hand in hand.
• The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.
• To be successful academically and socially, children need to practice specific
social skills:
o Cooperation
o Assertion
o Responsibility
o Empathy
o Self-Control
• Knowing the children we teach-individually, culturally, and developmentally-is
as important as knowing the content we teach.
• Knowing the families of the children we teach is as important as knowing the
children we teach.
• How we, the adults at school, work together is as important as our individual
competence: Lasting change begins with the adult community.
From Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc.
