Re: In Group - Out Group

From: Mary Louise Hemmeter
Email: ml.hemmeter@vanderbilt.edu
Date: May 22, 2006

Comments

Hi Linda. This is an interesting question. Let me offer a few suggestions. I am a big fan of developing expectations for children's behavior and teaching them in a systematic, intentional way. For example, you might have an expectation that "we are nice to our friends". This expectation is communication to families, posted in your classroom, and taught explicitly to children. Explicitly teaching the expectation means that you teach them the concept in a way that they can understand (using stories, puppets, books), you give them lots of opportunities to practice it with feedback, you give them lots of feedback during the day (especially commenting on their behavior when they are being good friends), and you talk to them about it at the end of very day. You can even write a story about being a good friend and illustrate it with photos of the children in your classroom. When you do all of this, it becomes a culture in your classroom. It is not incidental, it is planned and systematic. It also gives you a way to communicate with families. It is important that you communicate these expectations to families at the beginning of the year so that IF you have a problem, you have already introduced the concept to families.

The good thing about expectations (others might include: be a team player, be safe) is that they focus you and the other staff in the classroom on teaching children what you want them to do rather than focusing on what you DON'T want them to do. The challenge is to spend more time commenting on behaviors you want to see and less on the problem behaviors.

I hope that is helpful!!! I bet you are doing great things if this is the first time in 16 years you have had this problem!! Keep up the good work!!