Embedded Files
Community building involves active back and forth between students as well as between the teacher and students. Community building encourages the growth of relationships and fosters a safe and caring learning environment. Building relationships with my students helped me remember their names better. The more I talk with my students as a regular, worthwhile person, the more they will relax and take part in the class. Knowing my students will help me learn their strengths and weaknesses so I can better help them to learn.
Social Contract
Social contracts are a method where the students and teachers work together to brainstorm expectations and appropriate behaviors. They engage students and allow them to be a part of their own choices. This culminates into a set of rules that everyone should follow once they are agreed to. Talking about how we want to be treated and how we should treat others emphasises the community we will be a part of for the school year. Each student will have the opportunity to contribute and critique the social contract.
2. Sharing Circles
Instead of always sharing as a whole class for writing journals, students will sometimes pair up in small groups. Each student will share what they wrote while their classmates listen and note down at least one strength of their peer’s writing on a sticky note. Once everyone has shared their writing, students will give each other sticky notes listing each other's strengths.
3. Current Events
Each week, students will have the opportunity to choose a current event article from a local or national news site. Each student will summarize the article and its importance to the world and our community. How they could help or how the article makes them feel. On Friday, students may volunteer to share their article. Incorporating current events into the regular classroom experience can help students make connections with the past and present. These can be especially important for students when the current events are from their own community. Also, bringing up other perspectives or new ideas about something can peak students' excitement to learn.
4. Community Mapping Activity
During the first week of school, everyone will be given a blank piece of computer paper. The objective is to draw your community, where you live from a bird's eye view. The names of streets, nicknames of areas, your friend’s houses, the school, any and everything you can think of to add, do so. Once everyone has finished drawing their community maps, students may volunteer to come up and show theirs to everyone under the document camera and talk about their community.
5. Weekly Goals
On Mondays at the start of each class, I will go over a general agenda for the week. Together, as a class, we will outline goals and targets students plan to hit in order to stay on track. We will go over how students plan to hit each goal and how they will catch up if they fall behind. If we hit all of our goals for the week, then on Friday, the last couple minutes of class will be free work time.
6. Birthday line-up
Everyone, including me will line up around the classroom based on the month and day of our birthdays. Then, together, we will create a class calendar compilation of everyone’s birthdays. I will create a slideshow presentation and give students editing options so that they can customize their birthday slide. When someone’s birthday rolls around, I will have their slide up on the projector screen and as a class, we will wish them a happy birthday.
7. Paper Texting
Each student is handed lined paper with the objective to create their social media profile. Next, students will list some of their followers, other students in the class, with at least two being classmates they do not talk to often. To begin the texting part of the activity, students write about how they are feeling and any problems or news they want to share. Then students will switch desks, mingling around the room, writing replies to each other.
8. Anti-Bully Campaign
I will start a conversation with the class, listing on the white board types of bullying that occur at school and online. Then I will discuss the consequences that bullying can have on students who are being bullied and what they are going to do to help. As a class, we are going to create an Anti-Bully Campaign for the school. Students will be split up into small groups and asked to come up with ways to be nice and kind to others. Groups will share what they came up with then create anti-bullying posters to hang up around the school.
9. Gratitude Journals
For a writing prompt, students will be asked to journal as many things that they are grateful for as they can. For example, you can be grateful for being here today, your family and friends, a good book, or anything else you can think of. At the end of independent writing time, students may share some of the things they are grateful for if they feel comfortable doing so.
10. Two Truths and a Lie
The objective of this activity is to trick your classmates into choosing your lie. Think of two things about yourself that are truths and one thing that is a lie. For example, the number of siblings you have, your pets, if you have traveled somewhere, or something like that. We will go around the room to each person and vote on which of their three things we think is the lie.
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