Advisory

Pear Deck Check-in Slides

🍐 Checking in with kids

Building Class Community: Roll Call Questions

This blog post from Robin Neal at Frankfort International School shares a series of questions you might start an advisory morning with to get your students sharing and building a greater sense of community. Here are a few examples:

Name something that always makes you smile.
If you could take a one-time round trip in a time machine, where would you go?
What would you be willing to go to jail for?

Check out the blog post for more prompts.

Make Us Smile

This is an example assignment used in a Global Online Academy class to help build community among students in an online environment. It asks students to share something that may offer levity, motivation, inspiration, and/or smiles to classmates during a stressful time. You might try something similar with your advisory or even your classes.

Create an Advisory Playlist

This idea comes from the Global Online Academy Advocacy course where students share favorite songs with one another and create a class playlist. You might try to build an advisory or class playlist with your students.

How's the Weather Where You Are?

This is another example from Global Online Academy to help build a sense of community online. Ask students to supply either an image of the weather outside their window or an image of weather that captures their current mood. They can share their images and reply to one another with warmth, encouragement, and enthusiasm.

It's about Time

This is another idea from Global Online Academy meant to build a sense of community among students online. This one asks students to consider time... time you spend, waste, share, or "fill in the blank." What part of your daily or weekly routine is your best time spent? Again, you may use this prompt idea with your advisory or in your classes.

Aliens have landed

This icebreaker can be useful for classes with language and cultural differences. Tell the group to imagine aliens have landed on Earth and want to learn about your their school. But since they don’t speak English or understand our education, it needs to be explained with five symbols or pictures. Ask each participant to upload five simple images that best describe and communicate your school’s values and culture. Take a few minutes and look at all the images. Are there common themes?

The Deserted Island Scenario

Many of us played a game similar to this in school growing up.

In this virtual team building game, team members are given the scenario that they are stranded on a deserted island with seven objects, but they can only choose three. Make these objects as obscure and strategic as possible so that members are challenged to really think and plan.

Then split the team into groups and allow them to collaborate on which items they want to choose. Once all collaborations have finished, get onto a team video chat and discuss the results.

Sounds fun, right?

Examples of items are a bag of fruit and vegetable seeds, a pocket knife, a 100 ft rope, a bed sheet, a bucket, 2 liters of kerosene, a lighter, and so on.

Activities like this naturally make team members see each other as teammates and can create pride, healthy competition, and excitement within the team.

Such games also demonstrate how working together can yield better results, and can help virtual workers learn how to collaborate in a virtual setting.

Watch the same movie together….apart.

Agree to watch the same movie or TV episode during the week, then challenge members to share and compare something about what they saw. You might discuss alternate endings, favorite characters, an early plot twist that would negate the whole point of the show, or anything else your imagination suggests.

Simple virtual games

A ton of very basic ice breaker games lend themselves really well to a digital format, with little to no fuss to set up. A few of our favourites include:

Pictionary: We’ve used Skribbl in the past, but Drawasaurus looks promising too!
Charades: super simple – you just need to come to the video call with some good ideas!
Draw the picture: a classic communication game – someone describes a picture; everyone draws what they hear; hilarity at disfigured sketches ensues.

7 Ways to Maintain Relationships During Your School ClosureSuddenly, you’re not in the same physical space as your students. We asked teachers to share strategies for maintaining relationships—both peer-to-peer and student-teacher—when everything’s gone remote.

7 Ways to Maintain Relationships during Your School Closure

This Edutopia article offers seven strategies to maintain relationships between teachers and students (and students and students) when everything has gone remote. They are:

Try to say hello frequently, if you can.
Maintain morning meetings.
Reimagine temperature checks.
Try snail-mail pen pals, phone pals, or virtual turn and talk.
Create virtual tables (but don't just group friends).
Consider including parents.
Get kids to name -- and process -- their own emotions.

Click on the article for more details to each strategy.

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