Do you clarify what your rules mean?

When we teach expectations, it is so important to clarify what we are looking for.  Let me share a story from my son's middle school....He was often told to be organized with his work, but never told how to do that.  So....how could he be expected to organize without support?

Fast forward to high school where they said he would have to have time management skills.  This program actually spent orientation teaching him how to manage his time by making a schedule, breaking down tasks to 2 hours a night and then actually practicing it with "pretend" assignments.  Wow...what a difference.  Now, he is prepared, confident and ready to go.

This is part of a "no secret" classroom!

Here is an example of an anchor chart that we created to show what using time wisely looks like. We broke the expectation down into meaningful tasks that actually make sense to them. 

I hope this makes sense to you...