10 Tips for building classroom culture

Classroom Culture Matters

When your students walk into your classroom, many will decide in the first 10 minutes what to expect from you and your class. First impressions are powerful.

The students are making decisions based on how they perceive you dress, walk, speak and engage with them individually.

The shy students are hoping you don’t notice them and the outgoing ones want to be noticed as soon as possible.

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Each student’s unconscious mind is absorbing invisible messages from their five senses at a very rapid rate.

Above all, what these students will subconsciously be assessing is: “Is this classroom safe? Am I welcome here? Do I belong?”

Without a sense of safety and belonging, students will often struggle with the need for survival rather than the need to learn or be happy.

If you could imagine that your classroom is an island amongst other islands surrounded by sea, you may be able to grasp how important it is, within the whole context of a busy school, to create a safe harbour for students. Classroom safety and enhancement is a key element of good teaching.

Safe classroom cultures with teachers who form positive relationships with students create the most powerful forces for exceptional learning to occur. Indeed in many studies the three factors that are seen as the most significant ones that create improved academic outcomes for students are:

• High-quality teachers
• Engaging and relevant curriculums
• Positive parental involvement.

So what are the secrets to creating a good classroom culture?

1. Your promise or intention – to create a safe, positive environment to help every student improve from where they are, by working hard in class, and to inspire a love of learning and growing.
Start by ensuring you have lots of signs that this place is safe and interesting. I liked to have a small vase of fresh flowers, bright cheery motivational posters, and a saying of the week that was uplifting and inspirational. Building rapport is a key skill of good teaching and many do this without being aware they do it. Smiling, healthy eye contact, warm welcoming stance and a healthy dose of enthusiasm can be sensed by students very quickly. In addressing your class — especially for the first time — my suggestion is to be clear on your intention as their teacher. I always made a commitment to support everyone to achieve, to learn to grow and to enjoy sharing time together. I made it clear that everyone has different gifts and talents, and that the classroom was going to be a safe place to explore, to take learning risks, and to work on improving any areas of weakness that emerged. I always mentioned that any grade they received from me was never a reflection of my relationship to them, or any indication of their character or humanity; it was simply a mark indicating how they had performed at their given assessment. I also made it clear that once inside my classroom I would not accept put downs, or inappropriate behaviour that caused pain or suffering to anyone or anyone’s belongings. Finally, I made a commitment to treat them with respect and would aim to never shout at, shame or embarrass any student.

2. Create connectedness – paired sharing, partner work, having a class song.
Classrooms that feel safe for students to interact with each other freely and easily are the best environments for learning. Students need to have opportunities to really get to know each other — to connect beyond the masks that keep us all safe. This will build connectedness and inclusion and that’s what makes your classroom a place where students will enjoy being. This is very much about building trust. This can be done through:

• Sharing stories of personal events
• Allowing vulnerability
• Accepting others’ unique qualities and behaviours
• Loyalty (committing to goals and visions)
• Involving others in decision-making
• Valuing everyone’s ideas and willingness to participate.

3. Have the class create classroom guidelines for a positive classroom.
A good approach is to have students work in pairs of their own choice, and write what guidelines they want in our classroom, which will help us manage any inappropriate behaviour. Then a class discussion follows and these guidelines become formalised and a copy sent home to parents, as well as a copy posted on the wall. In my teaching career, these seldom changed. Students want the same as teachers — a safe place to learn, where they are treated with fairness, respect, compassion and great enthusiasm for learning about themselves, life and knowledge that will help them realise their full potential.

4. Failure as a gift.
As teachers, we need to model for our students that failure is a normal part of life, not a sign that we are ‘dumb’ or ‘bad’. Failure should be communicated as a way of showing us what has not yet been mastered, what needs to be practised. If children become afraid to fail, they can become afraid of school and reluctant to try anything new … thus their capacity to learn and grow is diminished. Remember to acknowledge efforts and give specific praise and feedback (not just rewarding success with certificates and stickers, as I’ve written about in a previous edition of Teachers Matter).

5. Explore 3 Ps – passion, persistence, practise.
Carol Dweck in her excellent book, Mindset (2008), writes about research that shows that when we have a flexible mindset we are more able to “focus on learning and growth rather than how successful each experience appears to the child”. Similar to the idea of failure as a gift, we can have an ethos of the 3Ps in our classrooms and demonstrate and encourage that learning should be approached with passion, persistence and practise. As Pablo Picasso said, “I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”

6. Create individual student plans for improvement (PPFIs).
Using a scale of 1-10 (where 10 is outstanding), students review their own progress using teacher feedback and their own feedback. It is important for students to know how they are doing specifically rather than generally and to plot areas that need attention. This may require extra catch-up work at home or school — again a choice students make. Placing some responsibility on to students about their progress during terms rather than just at semester report time can be helpful to identify concerns. Parents need to be kept in the loop in this process too if possible. Having PPFIs helps build a flexible mindset for all students.

7. Teach about the brain and how to maximise learning and accelerated learning strategies.
Talk to students about the essentials of healthy brain functioning (i.e. oxygen, water, enough sleep, exercise, etc.). Do you offer ‘brain breaks’ in your classroom to introduce movement? Do you encourage water breaks? Are you minimising stress in the classroom as best you can/do you take a few minutes out for relaxation or visualisation? Do you use repetition, music and other memory enhancers as teaching tools? These are good questions to ask in reflecting on how you maximise brain potential in your classroom. You will also be influencing your students to make positive brain chemicals. On top of this, think mind maps, colour, role playing … novelty and bright colours, movement and sound make the brain pay attention.

8. Teach thinking techniques(PMI/ Six hats).
Edward de Bono is, of course, one of the best-known experts in thinking skills and I love his PMI Technique to find the plus, minus and interesting points about an issue. This allows you to ponder and organise your thoughts pretty quickly and includes more points of view, thereby leading to more balanced decision-making. Of course, de Bono’s iconic ‘6 Hats’ work is also excellent for older students and his OPV (Other Person’s Viewpoint) is a useful thinking strategy. The Habits of Mind by Dr Art Costa are another excellent resource for improving student thinking and learning. Check them out if you haven’t already.

9. Have fun moments with fascinating facts and funny, witty, light moments.
There is growing research that shows that humour can minimise stress in the classroom, assist with retaining information and help students to understand things better. Using wit, irony, puns, riddles, and jokes, pictures without captions, funny poetry and fascinating facts can hugely benefit classroom culture… plus sense of humour is one of the top three qualities of excellent teachers according to research conducted with thousands of students.

10. Communicate with parents – create the triangle of care.
Parents become enthusiastic supporters of teachers who make an effort to care about their student’s wellbeing and social growth, as well as their academic and intellectual growth. Include parents in your classroom culture building – send them the class guidelines, share what’s happening in the classroom, and invite them to showcases and the like.

To me, classroom culture is a bit like the notion of “if you build it, they will come”, except when it is done really well, it is a case of “if you build it, they will flourish”.

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Maggie Dent


Maggie Dent is an author, educator, speaker, and parenting and resilience expert with a special interest in the early years and adolescence. She is a passionate advocate for the healthy, commonsense raising of children in order to strengthen families and communities. Maggie has a broad perspective and range of experience that shapes her work, a slightly irreverent sense of humour and a depth of knowledge that she shares passionately in a commonsense way. Her finest achievements are her four adult sons, deep human connectedness and her five books. www.maggiedent.com