The first few weeks of the school year are the perfect time to craft a vision for your classroom culture and plan ways to build community with your kiddos.
As educators, we want to create classroom spaces that make our students feel safe and valued. When teachers intentionally foster a sense of belonging, students are more engaged and have the opportunity to take risks with their learning without the fear of judgment.
Strengthening teacher-student relationships through community building is a really powerful way to kick off the year to help kids feel a greater sense of connection with you and their friends. It’s also more joyful for both students and teachers!
If you’ve already launched community-building activities and routines in your classroom — amazing! If you’re looking for where to begin or just want a few fresh ideas, we’ve got you covered.
Here are 4 ways to build relationships and community at the beginning of the school year:
Identity Webs
Identity Webs are a fantastic way to build relationships and community while focusing on sharing and affirming identities. In Being the Change, author Sara Ahmed shares several activities to do this. We suggest starting with identity webs. These are personal graphic representations of the different facets that make up our identity.
First, highlight your own identity web to the class and talk through your thought process of adding different parts of your identity.
Here are two examples:
Next, using a read-aloud text, work together as a class to map out the character’s identity and traits. Here are a few suggestions for mentor texts for this activity; however, knowing your students and what matters to them can also be very helpful in choosing read-aloud texts for your classroom and guiding students to find books that will interest them.
Finally, after you have students think, jot down, or sketch, and share what comes to mind when they think of the words to describe themselves, send them off to create! This activity can turn into an excellent “all about me” presentation as students share with partners or a group to get to know one another and build connections.
Expert tip: Have students save their webs! You can post them on a bulletin board, have them affix the web to their writing folder (great for K-2), or place them in a year-long portfolio.
A Spotlight Student of the Day
Spotlighting each of your students is a great way not only to get to know one another — it’s also an activity that builds connections and empathy among students.
Look at your daily schedule, and find a consistent 5-10 minute block each day that will serve as the “spotlight” time. Once you’ve determined a time block that works best, begin assigning each of your students a day until you’ve gone through the whole roster. I highly suggest going in alphabetical order so it’s easier to track.
Create a structure for the spotlight time block by thinking about what students would want to share during this time: Here are a few examples:
– A morning message with fill-in-the-blank facts about the spotlight student
– A “show-and-tell” format in which students bring an artifact that’s important to them
– Use a read-aloud, such as Alma and How She Got Her Name, to create a share prompt for students
Gratitude Jar
A gratitude jar is an activity that can live well beyond the beginning of the year and become a part of your daily classroom routine. Introduce the expectations of your gratitude jar by modeling how to think of a piece of gratitude for someone in the class, writing it down on a piece of paper, and putting it in the jar.
Include the writer’s name, who the gratitude is for, and what they want to say
Decide when and how you’ll share the gratitude with students (daily, weekly). We suggest setting aside five minutes at the end of the day or week to read the gratitudes from the jar to the class. Once you’ve read a piece of gratitude, give it to the person to keep and remember.
Expert Tip: Have students brainstorm ideas about what gratitude can sound like with sentence starters. Here are a few examples:
Early Elementary: [Name], I felt [feeling word] when you [action].
2nd Grade and Higher: Thank you, [name]. I felt [feeling word] when you [action]. This means a lot to me because…
Creating Classroom Team Names
Whether it’s table groups, row groups, or guided reading groups, giving students a voice and choice of what they call their groupings is a great way to bring in creativity early in the year.
Think through groupings that need names throughout your day, and then decide how you want students to collaborate and generate ideas. Students will feel a sense of investment in their team because they had a hand in developing it.
Teachers can further help facilitate team investment and a shared sense of identity by referencing the teams by their names. Here are some fun examples:
The start of a new school year can bring up many emotions for students — and educators too! By investing some time in community-building activities at the start, you’ll take a big step toward deepening connection and camaraderie in the classroom.
If you found the community-building suggestions in this article helpful, read these next:
- 4 Simple Routines To Set Your Class Up for the Best Year Ever
- Creating a Community of Readers and Writers Through Immersion
- 4 Tips for Gathering Small Groups in Reading
Connect with us on social media! You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter! Let us know what community builders you have incorporated so far!
