Now that I am on summer break I am doing a lot of planning for my upcoming year. One thing that I work very hard on is community building. I start from the moment my new little faces enter the classroom. I begin this by the way I guide discussions and the way that I let some of the conversations bloom. By modeling acceptance and excitement for every student, I see that they pick this attitude up very quickly.
As a group there are so many community activities that I do. One of my favorites has been giving them a piece of paper with 6 blank boxes. I have them write 5 little known true facts about themselves and then 1 fact that is not true. I advise them not to pick anything too obvious, such as "I have been to the moon." Then we cut out pieces apart and then bring them to a circle meeting place.
One by one they read and place their cards in front of them in the circle. The class has to guess which fact is the false one. This past year they took leadership as a group right away last year and I heard so many wonderful comments to each other. An example was a boy who said he was not good at drawing. There were many other students who said right away that they thought he was great at drawing. Another great part was that they could openly discuss the fact that we are not all great athletes, or have a cabin, etc. I learned this activity during a Responsive Classroom course I took many years ago. I love the activity and am very excited to continue it in my years to come.
This sounds like a fun activity Jen!
ReplyDeleteYou have inspired me to add new titles to my classroom library to help me teach character building. Thank you for sharing your great ideas for helping students learn empathy, compassion, and understanding of people who are different from themselves.
Jen, you do such a great job with the students in your classroom! I would love to be a child in such a warm, friendly environment. I look forward to hearing about all your community building activities next year.
ReplyDeleteJen, what character building books do you usually start the year out with? I want to do more of that this year. I like this activity too...it's kind of like "2 Truths and a Lie."
ReplyDeleteJen thats is a great idea. You are rubbing off on me left and right. I can only imagine the wonderful discussions this activity starts. I like how you explain that you model acceptence, I agree, students need to see and hear what it looks like in order to do it themselves!
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