Classroom Community
Classroom community is so important to make students feel loved, safe, and happy. We want our students to have a voice in their learning environment and feel respected by their teachers. Here are some ways we build classroom community and ideas for how to adapt them for online learning!
Class Meetings
When we attended the Teach Your Heart Out Conference in 2017, we fell in love with Brittany Root's (@Miss5th) class meetings. We took her base and made it work for our classrooms! On Friday afternoons, we have a class meeting. We choose a class leader to run the meeting. This person is someone who really exemplified great qualities that week. Whether it was picking up trash in the cafeteria when no one asked, or helping a friend with an assignment- we make whatever they did a big deal! Everyone cheers for their classmate when we announce the leader! This person gets the microphone and leads the meeting. This year we added a yard sign that we send home with the class leader to display in their yard for the week.
On the board, we'll have four options- shout out, suggestion, concern, or question. This class slide template comes from @TeachCreateMotivate. Students get one sticky note and pick a category to write about. This is a great way to have their voice heard. Sticky notes are allowed to remain anonymous if they choose. Then, they'll stick it on the board and get ready for the meeting. The class leader reads all the sticky notes and runs the discussion. After all the sticky notes are read, the class votes on a goal to work on for the week. Then, the meeting is over!
In a matter of about 30 minutes, we're able to give our students a voice in the classroom. We're also able to highlight great choices from students and just relax for a little bit! Through class meetings, we've added class jobs that students suggest, new class rewards, answered questions about what's happening around school, and solved problems that we, as teachers, wouldn't have known were problems to our students!
Adapt for online learning:
Consider setting aside a time to have a virtual class meeting! You can use Padlet.com to have students
"add sticky notes" under topics you choose. You can also use Google Slides assigned in Google classroom. This would be a great time to have students talk to their peers and highlight students who have been doing their work.
Class Instagram
When Ashley (@TeachCreateMotivate) posted about her class Instagram, we fell in love! We immediately printed the poster and hung it in our classroom with intentions of taking pictures during fun activities and posting on our "Instagram". But, we rarely updated it with new pictures because we didn't have time to print and pick them up at the local Walgreens. So, the next year, we upped our game! An amazing parent donated an Instax camera to our classroom and this was a game changer! We didn't need to print pictures anymore because they automatically printed! So, we could take pictures and post them in a matter of minutes. This became a truly reflective area looking back on the fun times we had over the year.
Adapt for online learning:
You can use Flipgrid to have students show off their classwork, or anything they are proud to share with the class. You can also share pictures and work on Google Classroom of student's in ZOOM meetings or working on fun activities (make sure to get parent permission with this one!).
T-mail
We saw an idea a few years ago for T-mail, teacher mail! We got our resource from @UpperElementaryAdventures and put a Target dollar spot mailbox in our classroom. Next to the mailbox are blank pages students can write on. The options we have are:
- I have something to tell you....
- I am excited about....
- I LOVED this activity.....
- I saw someone being a role model!
- I saw someone showing kindness!
- I want to share something with the class...
- Other....
Adapt for online learning:
Have a Google Form available to students on your class website or Google Classroom that students can fill out when they want to send you mail!
Shout outs
We are a Leader in Me school, so we're all about recognizing when we see others being a leader. We each have a bucket in our classroom with pens and sticky notes by it. Anytime a student wants to recognized someone else for being kind, helpful, a leader etc, they can get up and write them a sticky note and put it in the bucket. When we have extra time at the end of the day or on Fridays during the class meeting, we take time to read all the shoutouts. Students love being recognized and we love having them look out for the best in each other! They keep their shoutouts in a page protector in their leadership notebooks.
Adapt for online learning:
Create a simple Google Form for shoutouts. Post the link in your Google Classroom and let students write in. Read any entries at the start of each Zoom meeting! Don't forget to give some shout outs yourself :)
Eat Lunch With Your Students
This is a little relationship building technique that we picked up from the Ron Clark Academy. We both take the time each day to eat lunch with our kids- normally smack dab in the middle of them at the cafeteria table. We choose different kids to sit by each day (taking special care to "happen" to sit by one we've noticed is having an off day, if experienced). The school day gets busy with lessons and work but lunch is a time for everyone to sit back, relax, and catch up on their personal lives. We talk with them about Pokemon, movies, sports- whatever interests them! It's a great way to build relationships and we honestly look forward to that time and find our students do too.
Adapt for online learning:
Consider hosting a voluntary "lunch bunch" Zoom. Eat your lunch in front of the camera and invite others to join in. Just eat and chat and catch up in a relaxed setting. Whoever shows up, shows up- no pressure!
Getting To Know You Games
We always start the year off with fun getting to know you games. "Skittle Share" is a favorite for everyone. We give them each a couple Skittles and they answer questions based off what kind of Skittles they receive. You can assign whatever questions you'd like for each Skittle color!
Adapt for online learning:
Who says getting to know you games can't happen virtually? It may be more important than ever! Click here for a list of virtual getting to know you game ideas. Whatever you learn about your students, try to jot it down and check in with them about it later. It will mean more to them than you realize!
Interest Inventory
This is actually a technique we plan on doing virtually anyway, for ease of access throughout the year. We are making a Google form for students to fill out during the first week of school. We want to refer back to their answers throughout the year and make sure we add in some lessons on things they're interested in. We also want to bring up their interests in conversations to help build relationships. I believe it's also important to let them update their answers periodically throughout the year as their interests change. Here are some ideas of questions you can ask:
- When is your birthday?
- What do you like to be called?
- What do you feel are your strengths?
- What do you like to do for fun?
- Do you play any sports or do any extra curricular activities?
- What are some things you'd like to learn about this year?
- What kind of books do you like to read?
- Do you collect anything? If so, what?
- What is your favorite movie? Tv Show?
- What is your favorite candy?
- What is your favorite color?
- What subject do you like the least? What could make it better?
- What would make you more excited to come to school each day?
- How do you like to be recognized (in front of the class, with a private note, etc)?
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