Barr defines a classroom climate to be a reflection of the students’ feelings regarding their teacher and peers through interaction and involvement (2016). There can be two types of classroom climates: positive and negative with the former being the most sought after. A positive classroom climate can lead to a more favourable development of the students social, emotional and intellectual wellbeing. When executed well, students can feel a sense of belonging in the classroom and feel assured to tackle on new challenges within it (Bucholz & Sheffler, 2009). My mentor takes many steps in ensuring she has a positive classroom climate, but there are several key features she includes in order for it to stay that way. She adopts a growth mindset, utilizes small groups, and incorporates encouragement.
Growth Mindset
The value my mentor prominently believes in is growth mindset. Growth mindset is the belief that knowledge is not fixed and that one can continue to learn through practice (Derler, 2019). Students with a growth mindset can be attributed to having high effort and high perserverance; when receiving negative feedback students with a growth mindset are more likely to try again in hopes of a better outcome (Mangels et al, 2006). It's important that growth mindset be adopted in classrooms because it can help students to believe in themselves and take on challenges, instead of resigning themselves to their failures. Not all students have the same abilities. Depending on their background, they may have more or less experience with the content presented to them.
During one of our math small groups, my mentor had brought in some worksheets that included three different types of ability level. During one of the high ability questions, one of the students answered the question wrong. It was a question that dealt with percentages, something they had never learned, in-depth, before. So, he was reluctant to try again. Seeing this, my mentor asked him to try again, once more, with her. Together, they broke the question down into pieces, so he could better understand the question. After a couple of tries, he managed to successfully answer the question and you could tell that he was extremely proud of himself. She then proceeded to do more of the same question using different numbers. I think the way my mentor handled this was amazing. When she noticed one of her students struggling, she didn't address him immediately. She gave him some time to figure it out on her own and considered the other members of the group. If she were to help him out immediately, it could have ruined it for the other students who were also trying to figure out the answer. I also liked that she tried to do the question again using different numbers. It assures the student in question, that when he found his answer for the previous question was not a fluke. Instead, with hard work and practice, he can easily solve the question and as my mentor says best, "Feel your brain grow!".
Classroom Interactions
There are two types of interactions in the classroom: student-student and teacher-student. With distance learning, teacher-student interaction is done much more frequently than student-student interaction, but this does not mean that student-student interaction does not happen. In fact, the school believes that it is important that students get to know one another as having positive relations with peers can lead to a sense of belonging (Thorpe, 2012).
One of the initiative my mentor has taken to increase student-student interaction, as well as including teacher-student interaction is creating a fun and interactive morning meeting. Morning meeting is a session done at the beginning of the school day to give students the opportunity to interact with other. Our morning meetings include: a morning greeting, a morning message, a morning activity and storytime.
Greeting
The first thing we do in class is have our morning greeting. Our morning greetings are different everyday and it's fun to see students curious about what our morning greeting would be. We learned social distance greetings, cartoon greetings and even ASL greetings. It allows students to get to know other students from different friend-groups and let them a learn a new form of greeting (Danby et al, 2012). Since we are learning on Google Classroom I would often instruct the students to perform their greetings to their peers on their right, left, top and bottom. This is great practice because it helps to break down barriers between the students and allow them to get to know one another. By greeting one another, we are inadvertently acknowledging one another, thus valuing their presence (What is the Value of Saying 'Hello'?, 2016).
Message
The second thing we do in the classroom is a morning message. A morning message is a short, daily message from the teacher. It welcomes the students to school, as well as give them a little preview of what the school day entails. These previews can get students to feel excited for the day and build a classroom community as they welcome the message and prepare the needed materials for class (Walton, 2016).
Activity
After our morning message, we began our morning activity. Depending on the day of the week, our morning activity varies. Our morning activity can be classified into two different types: sharing or group activity. Our sharing activity consists of the teacher introducing a question and students answering the question. Sharing activities are great to have because it helps students to develop considerate communication with each other, as one would need to listen while the other shares. It can also help students practice speaking in front of a large number of people (McTigue et al, 2009).
One of the sharing activity we did in class was, "What is your nickname: Feeling + What You At For Breakfast". Students were required to share their nickname based on how they felt that morning combined with what they ate. There were some crazy answers and students loved figuring out what their nickname was. It definitely brought on lots of laughter and students started off the day happy.
We also included group activities with the students to give them a break from having to sit still and listen. Group activities encourage active participation with all students and create a sense of class identity (McTigue et al, 2009). One of our group activities was a scavenger hunt. Students are instructed to retrieve an item of the teacher's choosing, but instead of simply giving them an item, it was described. One of the items the children needed to retrieve were something blue. Students then came back with a myriad of items such as a bottle cap, a marker and a shoe. I really enjoyed conducting this activity because not only does it exercise the body, but the mind as well. Students reinforce their problem-solving skills when instructed to find objects of a certain feature (LaChance, 2016) and use their communication skills to talk about the item they brought back.
Storytime
Lastly, we have storytime. Since the students are unable to go to school and visit their libraries and check out books, I thought it would be a great idea to read them stories from the school library. Reading to children has many benefits. When you read to children you teach them skills such as sitting still for long periods of time or even listening. It also helps them wither literacy as reading new can expose them to new vocabulary (Read Together to Support Early Literacy, n.d.). It can also help to develop their values. When selecting books, I made sure to include books with values that can strengthen them as an individual.
One book I read was I'm Gonna Like Me by Jamie Lee Curtis. In the book it talks about the importance of liking yourself. It taught the students that no matter what flaws or perfections they have it's important to love themselves because there is only one them. Lastly, books can help shape their world. Due to the pandemic, they may be in a limited environment where they are unable to have new experiences (Why is Storytelling Important to Children, n.d.). Reading them books can temporarily take them away and show them people, places and situations that are foreign and exciting to them.
Culture Of Encouragement
All learning environments are complex and multidimensional (Edmonds, 1999). It takes careful planning and consideration in order for learning to be effective. I believe what makes a learning environment supportive for students are reliant on the way a student feels. The students needs to feel valued, included, and empowered. I think one of the greatest ways to achieve all three is through encouragement.
Encouragement is one of the most powerful tools teachers can use to motivate students to succeed (The Importance of Encouragement in Education, n.d.) and it must not be mistaken with praise. Praise is a means to an end. It commends their work and their effort. If done constantly, students will begin to value the finished product, rather than the learning behind it (Läänemets & Rostovtseva, 2015). This is not to say that praise shouldn't be used, it should, it's just a matter of when you praise them. Instead of praising them when students are done, you should praise them when they make progress. Encouragement, on the other hand, is supporting someone through their endeavour, and although a correct finished product is great, sometimes it's not necessarily important. Encouragement sounds easy, but there are many steps you should take in order to make it effective.
Descriptive
Descriptive encouragements are much more meaningful, therefore, much more effective (Mering et al, 2019). Using descriptors in your encouragements can have a lasting impact on the student and motivate them to do the action again (The Importance of Encouragement in Education, n.d.). One of the procedures we have in the classroom is to always mute your microphone. This is done to prevent students from interrupting teachers, while they speak. Sometimes, a students get really excited about what the teacher is saying and unmutes his comment to speak, which interrupts the teacher's flow. Normally, my mentor would say, "_____, this is not your time to talk" and the student would mute himself and raise his hand, but it would continue to happen again the next day. One day, the teacher noticed him raising his hand, while his microphone was muted and she responded with, "________, thank you for waiting patiently and raising your hand". There was a difference in response when she would encourage him, rather than reprimand him. Previously, when she reprimanded him, the student would continue to ignore the rule and unmute his microphone and speak. After she started encouraging him, less time would lapse before he would backtrack to his previous behaviour.
Gestures
Including gestures in your encouragement is another way to make encouragement more effective. Encouragements from teachers are oftentimes verbal, but including non-verbal gestures with your encouragements can also having lasting effects on making your students feel valued. A couple non-verbal gestures my mentor would use with her students are air high-fives and air fist bumps.
One of the times my mentor used non-verbal gestures with her encouragement is during one of our Empowerment sessions. One of the students came for a household where their first language is Spanish. When she would sound out the letter, "Y", she would pronounce "ee", rather than "yuh". One day, she caught herself as she was pronouncing the letter "Y" as "ee" and quickly changed to "yuh". It was a superb moment because the student recognized the sound, so my mentor asked her permission to give a high-five. It was definitely the right decision to encourage her using non-verbal gestures. To the student, she was smiling widely and through the rest of the session she pronounced the "Y" with no error. I also noticed that this motivated the other student to pronounce his letters correctly and at the end my mentor also gave him a high-five. I think if my mentor hadn't high-fived the first student when she fixed her pronounciation and just gave her a standard, "Good job" it wouldn't have had such an effect on her. She would probably think that it was just a normal accomplishment, but by introducing the high-five it showed that the teacher valued her learning and made that moment an empowering moment.
Post-Fails
Another way to effectively give encouragement to is immediately after students fail to succeed. During one of our guided reading sessions, we read about about spiders. While reading, one of the students had to read the word, "larvae". He had never seen that word before and had difficulty pronouncing it. He pronounced the first three letters, but seemed to stumble with the last three and stopped reading. My mentor recognized his struggle and quickly jumped in to help him read it, but before she did, she commended him on his efforts. I think it's great that my mentor did this when she did. The student in question reads very fluently and rarely has trouble reading, but with the word "larvae" it seemed to daze him. With my mentor's word of encouragement she was able to reassure him it was in fact a tricky word and that she appreciated him for trying. This lifted his spirits and he continued to read the rest of the passage.