In Kingsville, all classrooms at the beginning of the year are creating an essential agreement. Kingsville creates essential agreements for each team, each task force and the entire school. The word shows the keywords in the original student list, which helps them learn. We believe it is important to have an essential agreement based on creating an environment conducive to learning and not on rules and regulations. We then thought about what our classroom should be, and the children left in pairs to chat. The next day, we asked, “What are the most important things for you?” The class insisted that everything was essential and that nothing could be lost with this agreement! Our teaching and learning team has an “essential agreement” inspired by this clip: do a quick search for Google images on “class rules” and “class chords” (or “essential chords,” as they are called in the PYP) and see if anything surprises you… Today, Jocelyn and I developed our class agreement. We started asking the children to think carefully and then write down what helps them learn and what hinders their learning. Later, we brought back a list of all the things they had written, and as a group, the students highlighted those they considered to be an essential class agreement that would maximize learning for all. This will be compiled, another time, to make sure everyone agrees and then we will have our class meal agreement! Essential agreements are not rules and directions, but essential agreements indicate common standards and expectations.
This is a joint action by all the staff in this classroom or all the teams involved to outline the environment that will help everyone learn and achieve their best. At first I was a little confused, but I had to smile. When I said it was not the rules, but essential agreements, I realized that they were the same for him. This is one of the best I have read so far on discussion and creating an essential agreement. Teachers and students are sometimes so “accustomed” to creating them, but they have not understood why they did it.