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Sep 16

A Collaborative Approach to Creating Class Expectations

At the beginning of the school year instead of standing in front of my class and telling my new students my rules and expectations for their class behavior, I like to start with a conversation. So rather than handing out a list of rules, I ask students to make their own lists of what respect actually looks and sounds like in a classroom. This activity gives students a voice in creating the expectations we will follow throughout the year, and turns a typical beginning-of-the-year conversation into an opportunity to collaborate, think, and create.

The Bellringer Brainstorm

I continue to establish our daily routines by starting class with a bellringer prompt focused on the topic. Students spend 2 to 3 minutes brainstorming independently in response to the following question: What does respect look like or sound like in the classroom? By phrasing the question this way, students start the class by thinking of tangible (and repeatable) examples. After each student has had some time to create their own lists, they discuss and add to create a table brainstorm.

Carousel Brainstorm

Next students move around the room in small groups or pairs to complete a carousel brainstorm. At each whiteboard, they add three original, specific examples of respect to one of four categories:

  • Respecting each other
  • Respecting the classroom environment
  • The teacher respecting students
  • Respecting the teacher

I like the final category because it makes the conversation reciprocal. Respect isn’t simply something students are expected to give, but it is something we all contribute to creating.

After visiting each station, students take one final walk around the room to read through all of the ideas. They choose their top “rules”—the expectations they think are most important for creating a respectful classroom.

Make a Visual Commitment

Next, students work together to choose one of their ideas to turn it into a respect poster.

This year, I had students create their posters in Canva, which added another layer to the activity. Students could take and upload their own photographs showing what respect looks like in action. It also gave them a low-stress introduction to a digital tool we will use again later in the year to create and publish projects.

The finished posters are printed, laminated, and displayed at the front of the classroom

More Than Just Rules

What I like most about this activity is that the expectations on the wall aren’t simply my rules. They are agreements students generated, discussed, prioritized, and turned into something they can see every day.

And when we need a reminder about classroom expectations later in the year, I can point back to the posters and the conversation that created them.

Instead of beginning the year with “Here are my rules,” we begin with a much more important question: What kind of classroom do we want to create together?

Kelly Virgin is a WCWP teacher leader who teaches high school English for the Kennett Consolidated School District.

Sep 9

From Conversation to Creation: A Back-to-School ELA Activity

The first week of school is full of introductions. Students are learning their schedules, figuring out classroom routines, and, most importantly, trying to figure out who they will spend the next year learning alongside and from. I like to use this time to get students talking and collaborating right away, but without putting anyone on the spot.

This low-stakes Venn diagram activity is one of my favorite ways to start the year because it does so much more than help students get to know one another. In one block period, students are talking, listening, taking notes, organizing ideas, collaborating, and presenting. These are all skills we will continue to practice throughout the school year.

Start with What You Know

For the bell ringer, students move around the classroom and respond to five prompts:

  • Favorite food
  • Favorite place
  • Favorite person
  • Favorite activity
  • Favorite entertainment

They can write or draw their responses. This gets students moving and thinking while giving them some personal information to use later in the activity.

Partner Conversation

Next, I assign students a partner. Early in the school year, I intentionally avoid having students choose their own partners. This gives them an opportunity to work with someone they might not otherwise approach and removes the anxiety of figuring out “Who am I going to work with?” I made the pairing random and easy – find the person with the same color dry erase marker as you.

Once they are partnered, students participate in five short, three-minute conversation rounds. Each round focuses on a different topic:

  1. Favorites & Likes
  2. Places
  3. Activities
  4. Family & Friends
  5. Entertainment

Students talk, listen, and take notes about their partner’s responses. I provide question stems and model the conversations before they begin, which gives my English Language Learners a structure for participating in the conversations. These scaffolds can easily be adjusted or removed for more advanced classes. However, I find even higer-level students benefit from clear models and structure early in the school year.

From Conversation to Organization

After the conversations, students use their notes to create a Venn diagram comparing themselves with their partner.

Before they begin, I show them a teacher model so they can see what the finished product might look like. Students then work together to add:

  • 5 unique things they learned about their partner
  • 3 things they have in common

This is also a subtle introduction to an organizational tool that students will use throughout the year. A Venn diagram isn’t just something we complete during the first week, but it becomes a visual way to organize similarities and differences, compare ideas, and prepare for writing in response to literature later in the course.

Collaborate, Create, and Share

Once their Venn diagrams are complete, students present them to the class as a way of introducing their partners. Instead of simply saying their partner’s name and a favorite food, students have something meaningful to share because they have spent time listening and organizing what they learned. To support my English Language Learners, I provide sentence stems, model, and give them teacher-supported time to draft their presentations on a notecard.

The activity mirrors the work we will do all year in ELA: We collaborate, we create, and we share. And because the content is personal but low stakes, students are practicing those skills without worrying about whether their answers are “right.”

End with a Listening Challenge

I like to finish the class with a quick listening quiz. Students have about 30 seconds to write down the name, or names, of classmates who fit descriptions they have just heard:

Who is…

  • from Venezuela?
  • loves cats?
  • plays soccer?
  • works at Walmart?

Suddenly, students are looking around the room and realizing, Oh! I know who that is!

It’s a simple way to reinforce the information they heard during the activity while continuing to build classroom community.

Why I Keep Coming Back to This Activity

By the end of the lesson, students have had multiple opportunities to speak with a classmate, practice active listening, organize information, work collaboratively, and stand in front of the class to share. But perhaps the most important outcome is less academic: students leave knowing a little bit more about the people in the room.

For me, that’s exactly what I want from a first-week activity. We are already doing ELA, just without the pressure of calling it ELA yet.

We talk. We listen. We organize. We create. We share. And along the way, we begin to build a classroom community.

Kelly Virgin is a WCWP teacher leader who teaches high school English for the Kennett Consolidated School District.

Sep 2

Book Review: Onward: 16 Climate Fiction Short Stories to Inspire Hope

Review by Janice Ewing

For several years, the West Chester Writing Project has run a social justice study group. The group has taken different forms, but we have always turned to shared readings as a focus for our discussions. This summer, we decided to read Onward: 16 Climate Fiction Stories to Inspire Hope, edited by Nora Shalaway Carpenter. We chose this text for a few reasons.


First, we’re increasingly aware of the role of climate change in our lives. We are inundated with news of catastrophic events that are becoming more the norm than the exception. At the same time, we see the variability of reactions to the issue, from support for scientific research and adjustments to our personal and communal lives, to denial and enactment of policies that exacerbate the problem. Perhaps most concerning is the sense of hopelessness that can spread, especially among young people, when they see climate-related disasters unfold before their eyes. The stories in this book don’t shy away from the harsh realities of water shortages, fires, and floods, but they all contain young adult characters who exhibit agency, creativity, and persistence in the midst of extreme conditions. To me, this was the essence of “hope” in this collection – not that we don’t face enormous challenges, but that our individual and collective actions can still make a difference.


The stories are all fictional, but they include realistic fiction, science-fiction, dystopian, and other genres; individual readers will connect more with some than others, but the variety is an additional strength of the book. For example, in “The Care and Feeding of Mother” by Erin Entrada Kelly, a seventeen year old girl harbors a secret – she has a real plant on a futuristic planet in which nature as we know it has been destroyed. Can she nurture it and spread its roots? In “A Trashy Love Story” by Sara Aronson, the teenage daughter of a rabbi is caught shoplifting. As part of her atonement, she reluctantly joins a community environmental group and finds an unexpected sense of purpose in her life. In Nora Shalaway Carpenter’s “Armadillo by Morning,” a group of teenage friends in North Carolina find their relationships tested when issues of climate change, respect for nature, and economic hardships collide over the sudden appearance of an armadillo.


This element of variety within a common theme was another one of our reasons for choosing this book for summer reading. Our thinking was that it would lend itself to each member sharing a story that especially resonated with them, whether because of subject matter, characterization, or writing style. This same strategy could be adapted by other groups of teachers and students. In addition, the stories in the collection could serve as models for students writing their own climate-related fiction and perhaps creating a class anthology.


If you are interested in our social justice group, please check the West Chester Writing Project website for more information. All are welcome!

Carpenter, Nora Shalaway. (2026). Onward: 16 climate fiction stories to inspire hope.
Charlesbridge, MA

Janice Ewing is a 2004 fellow of the West Chester Writing Project (the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project at that time) and a current member of the advisory board. Her interests include teacher inquiry, collaboration, and mentoring. She and Dr. Mary Buckelew, are the coauthors of Action Research for English Language Arts Teachers: Invitation to Inquiry (Routledge, 2019).