A few years ago, I worked as an instructional coach for our state’s department of education. In one school, I saw the school leadership insist that every teacher begin the first day of school almost like a college class – go over the “syllabus” (as in: “welcome to first grade and this is what we’ll learn this year”), define the rules and consequences, then immediately start teaching content.
A few teachers went “rogue” and did a good bit of community-building and relationship-building activities prior to beginning content teaching. They went even more rogue by continuing these activities throughout the first few weeks of school and any time they felt the need to strengthen the community throughout the year.
No surprise: the “rogue” teachers built the most positive relationships with students, had the most cooperative and collaborative groups of students, actually enjoyed their classes, AND got stellar academic results. Bonus: these teachers enjoyed teaching and enjoyed their students.
What about the teachers who followed the leadership directions? Well – let’s just say that their results were not so good. (Part of my job was to make suggestions. Changing how we started the year was the first suggestion I made.)
One important aspect of building a classroom community is to create routines/rituals/traditions in your class. Think about rituals or traditions that you might do with your family. These activities build a sense of belonging and give everyone something comforting and familiar to look forward to doing together. Creating some of these in your classroom will have that same effect.
Here are 7 ideas to try in your first week or month of school. Start small. Plan one thing to do each day and add on as you feel ready.
1 – Start a morning meeting routine. Community-building activities can happen throughout the day, so don’t limit yourself to morning! Here’s how to get started.
The Responsive Classroom website describes morning meeting in more detail.
There are four components of morning meetings: Greetings, Share, Activity, and Message. (This isn’t a requirement – just a suggested framework.)
Greetings can take many forms. Here are some ideas from Responsive Classroom. At the beginning of the year, you might focus a bit more on making sure everyone knows every student’s name and the correct way to pronounce it.
Share should always be kept optional. Sarah Gardner has some great ideas HERE.
The Activity part of the meeting is meant to build your community and let students practice their social and academic skills with an interactive activity.
And finally, the Message part of the meeting is where you shift the students’ focus to the academic content for the day. Here are some examples from Responsive Classroom.
If you’re looking for more information or ideas, these books are great resources:
Morning Meeting Book
First Six Weeks of School
80 Morning Meeting Ideas for Grades 3-6
IDEAS FOR SHARE/ACTIVITY:
~share compliments or appreciation for another student. Sentence starters like “I want to compliment ____ for doing _____” and “I appreciate _____ because ______” are simple ways to start.
Encourage students to compliment/appreciate something someone else does rather than something they have or are wearing. Make this a voluntary, optional activity. I also find it helps if I start the compliments/appreciations.
Don’t be surprised if you don’t get much out of students at first! They will get more comfortable with this as they get to know each other better and if you consistently implement the routine.
~”Would you rather?” questions. Minds in Bloom has a great archive of questions to use at different times of year.
~These awesome Question of the Day slides were shared in a Facebook group!
~And these slides were shared to edit and use for the different quarters of the year!
~Establish a day to go on a virtual field trip!
~Play 4 Corners with these fun prompts from Just Two Teachers.
~Use these questions for Walk-Talk-Swap. (Distribute question cards to students. Play music and allow them to move around the room. When the music stops, they stop, ask their nearest classmate their question, answer their classmate’s question, then swap cards. When the music starts, they walk around the room again.)
~Use “If I Could” questions from Just Two Teachers.
~Try a 60 Second Relate Break.
2 – Get your students up and moving and talking to each other with this classmate scavenger hunt. And here is another option.
3 – Learn more about your students’ likes and dislikes with these questions. Here is another option for this activity.
4 – Getting input from students’ families/caregivers is also very helpful. Here are some questions to ask.
5 – Have students bring in objects to share more about themselves with this classic “brown bag” activity.
5 – Establish classroom norms with your students. This post explains how to do that.
6 – Read aloud, read aloud, read aloud. Nothing brings people together better than a good story. Here is a link to my updated list of great picture books for upper elementary students, and a link to some great chapter books.
7 – Just like you started the day with a circle/meeting, consider ending the day with a closing circle. During this time, you might review the day, talk about what was good, what was more difficult, discuss what we’re going to do after school today.
Some questions I ask to get the conversation started:
*3 A’s – share an appreciation for something or something, an apology for something, or an aha moment (where you noticed something or mastered something)
*what was one rose and one thorn from the day?
*what was something challenging or new for you today?
*tell us about a time when you had to push through something hard today
*how were you creative today?
*what is something you did to take care of yourself today?
Taking the time to build this community at the beginning of the year is so important. Yes, we start teaching content pretty quickly, but taking the time to gather as a community and learn more about each other will give you more quality teaching time throughout the year.