Behavioral Expectations

Learning Activity

Expectations are a direct outgrowth of your school’s beliefs, vision, and mission. First, the school’s PBIS leadership team develops 3-5 overarching school-wide social, behavioral expectations that are clear, positively stated, and easy to remember. These expectations are then shared with staff with the goal of at least 80% buy-in. The team then parses these expectations to define the expected social behaviors (or rules), which are what students do specifically to meet those expectations in the classroom, in non-classroom settings (e.g., restrooms, cafeteria, hallways, etc.), and in all settings of the school.

This process of setting and clarifying expectations results in the development of a teaching matrix that is distributed to all staff and defines expectations in the school. Additionally, the faculty contributes to the development of lesson plans that will be used throughout the school. 

Defining school-wide expectations, rules, and procedures creates a full curriculum to allow you to teach success proactively, and also to address any problem behavior that may occur across school settings. Further, they offer a framework to guide staff decisions about discipline, foster consistency in your efforts with students, allow you to teach proactively, and provide students and parents with a positive message about discipline.

Read through the ‘Clarifying Expected Behavior’ PDF and view the ‘Identifying School-wide Expectations and Rules’ PPT linked in the Resources section. 

Resources

Clarifying Expected Behavior

Identifying School-wide Expectations and Rules

Examples of school-wide Behavior Expectations for Elementary Schools

Example of Behavior Expectations and a Pledge

Examples of school-wide Behavior Expectations