Classroom Values

About This Worksheet

This worksheet helps students think about the shared expectations that make a classroom respectful, safe, and welcoming. Children rank seven classroom norms, explain which one matters most to them, and then use their choices to write three rules focused on dignity, safety, and inclusion. The listed norms address listening, including others, reporting threats, respectful disagreement, privacy, accountability, and refusing to support harmful behavior. Instead of simply handing students a list of rules, the activity gives them a meaningful voice in deciding how people should treat one another.

Skills Developed

Students strengthen community awareness, respectful communication, prioritizing, and shared decision-making. They think about why different classroom expectations matter and how clear rules can protect emotional and physical safety. Writing rules from the ranked norms also helps children turn broad values into practical agreements that can guide daily behavior. These skills support cooperation, belonging, conflict prevention, and personal responsibility throughout the school year.

Grade & Stage Appropriateness

This worksheet is best suited for upper elementary through middle school students, particularly grades 4 through 8. Students at these levels are mature enough to discuss fairness, privacy, inclusion, and the responsibilities that come with being part of a group. Younger students may benefit from examples of what each norm looks like in practice, while older students can debate how the expectations should apply in classroom and digital spaces. The worksheet is especially useful at the beginning of a school year, after a break, or whenever a class needs to rebuild trust and community.

Connections to Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL)

This worksheet supports all five CASEL areas, with especially strong connections to relationship skills, social awareness, and responsible decision-making. Students consider what others need in order to feel respected, choose norms that protect the whole group, and take part in creating shared expectations. When I have built classroom agreements with students, I have noticed that children are more likely to follow rules they understand and helped shape. This page creates a warm opportunity to explain that a classroom community works best when every person’s dignity, safety, and right to belong are protected.

Using This Worksheet

Teachers can use this activity to create or review a classroom constitution and then combine student ideas into a final set of shared agreements. It works well in small groups first, followed by a whole-class conversation about which expectations should be included and why. Parents and homeschool educators can adapt the same process to create family learning rules for discussion, shared work, devices, and respectful disagreement. Once the rules are written, display them where students can see them and return to them as a guide when problems arise.