September: RAMS Rules

     Our School-Wide Positive behavior plan, RAMS Rules, was rolled out a few years ago.  Even though I see the plan displayed in almost all of our classrooms, I wanted more than exposure, students needed to have full understanding of the concepts.

     Every school year I review the RAMS Rules to our kindergarten and Pre-K students.  The lesson is a component of my welcome agenda that introduces myself and other support staff, such as our school psychologist.  At the end of the lesson I tell the students what their job is as a ram, which is a review each RAMS Rule individually.

     Because it is hard to get into every classroom, I thought of doing mini lessons during the morning announcements, and it was a success!I wanted the mini lessons to be creative and catchy so the students would remember each element.  Because we have a whole month to review the rules, I designated each week during the month of September to one RAMS Rule.  Therefore the first week was Respect, week two was Appropriate Behavior, week three was Management of Time, and the final week of September was designated to Safety.

     Developing the content took some time, as I wanted each week to be different.  I looked at each word, and thought about what I needed to teach the student to best understand the word.  An example would be for the word “Respect,” I first defined the word, and the following days I shared antonyms of the word, and then synonyms.  The final two days of the week reviewed the “Golden Rule” to help better understand how to act respectful.  Along with the minis lesson, every day also had a song attached.  For Friday’s review of the “Golden Rule” the Beach Boys song, “All You Need is Love” was used.

      As the weeks continued, it became harder to become creative!  The week of Safety forced me to think most outside of the box.  I decided to think of the word safety in more global terms.  Throughout the week we talked about bullying, saving the environment, self-care, and having compassion for others.

The complete list of lessons is below!