Every year I kick off the school year like a sprint! Getting up extra early, staying extra late, making sure the year is off to the best possible start. Eventually I have to slow down… but that September burst is so exciting! Every year I plan to do more team building and bonding activities, but it never seems to go as planned. Each year I get nervous about time (how fresh the rush of June is in all our minds) and jump into curriculum. This year I will not do that. I will allow time for students to get to know each other, get to know me and get acquainted with the flow of the class as a group.
I truly believe that we treat people differently when we know their story. My emotions changed drastically as I watched this video. Attitudes and patience for others change when we know each other’s narratives. As much as possible, I want everyone to get to know each other so that we can be a little more patient and kind.
My plan to facilitate this:
1. I am at a new school this year so I am excited for the kids to get to know me 🙂 (I can’t just rely on reputation as I normally do). I am going to make a video of myself at home and show it to the kids so they know who I am and who is in my family. Depending on technology that is available, I would love the kids to do the same and share about themselves through video.
2. The first 10 minutes are crucial to setting the tone and getting the school year started off right. I am going to try the technique mentioned in this blog post. She suggests getting students to come in right away, leave backpacks on the hook, and start an activity. She leaves a simple activity and a pencil on each desk so that students can start to get to know each other and be successful at a task. That way she can quickly get around to each student and start a relationship. After the activity is finished, they can unpack their backpacks and talk about procedures and teacher quirks
3. I want to create a classroom quilt (hopefully somehow connected with dot day) that can hang up in the classroom as a reminder we are all a part of a bigger group. Each student will create a square about themselves and then the squares will be fastened together to form a quilt. I love having things in my class that are student created, rather than a really nice bulletin board set from a fancy teacher store. 🙂
4. I want to do several team building activities. For example, students will need to build a cup tower using a rubber band with 4 strings attached to it. They must equally stretch the rubber band to go around the cup, without touching the cup, in order to build the stack. We may also create towers out of spaghetti and marshmallows in groups, since we will be talking about building things in science.
5. It would be cool if students could create their own digital time capsule to be opened on the last day of school. I still have to figure out what platform I am going to use, this could be on their blog. The time capsule could include their height, shoe size and favourite things. Then they could open the capsule on the last day of school and see how they have changed.
6. Create an “about me” post or page on their blogs and allow students to comment on each other’s blogs and find someone who has something in common with themselves.
7. I want to start each day with a class meeting. When I worked at a Catholic school, we started every morning giving intentions for others. I would like to start the day off with giving students an opportunity to share ( in a secular way 🙂 ).
Do you have any other ideas? How do you start your school year? How do you start to build relationships in your class?
I think that the time that you spend building relationships right at the beginning of the school year is so crucial. While many teachers are talking about the “rules” for the classroom and giving out what they are learning for the year, I think that stuff can wait. Get to spend some time together and know each other and that stuff will be so much easier.
Great post and great focus for the start of the year. Sounds like it will be a great one for you, the students, and your school!
Thanks for the support, G! I really look forward to getting to know all the kids and staff. I can’t wait 🙂
I love the idea of students creating their own digital time capsule! This is such a creative idea, providing so many great educational opportunities as they plan and gather their items. What fun they will have “opening” these in the spring. 🙂
I agree Kathy, I just need to find a platform to create them. I will keep you posted when I figure that out 🙂
Sounds like a great plan for start-up. One of my former students showed me a time capsule he made from K-7 that was so cool. It was a simple measuring tape about one inch wide and 6 ish feet long. Every year, students would measure their feet and height. They would sign their names and write a couple of facts about themselves on the tape. They later received it as a grade 7 graduation present. The student moved to our district for Grade 8 and used that measuring tape in a memoir he wrote for me in Grade 11. I think it must have been important to him to have this document of his personal and physical growth.
I am the librarian at my school and I’ve had to look at different ways to do start up in this roll.
Enjoy the rest of your summer!
Wow, thanks for sharing that story, Rhea! I love that the student kept the measuring tape! Maybe It would be really cool to have something that students do every year like that!
Thank you,thank you, this post just took away all the anxiety I had about the first day back after being away from teaching for a few years
Alison,
I am glad that you are feeling more confident about the first days back. There are some new things that have happened in the past few years that you might need to learn, but the one thing that never changes is caring about kids and building great relationships. 🙂
Thank you for sharing your ideas Paige! I agree that developing connections and relationships right from the beginning is so important. For #2, I always have a word search with all student names on it on all desks for students to start working on. I think this is one way for students to start learning about the others in their learning community, even if it’s as simple as their names. In the past, I have usually used this time to help get students settled, but after thinking about your post, I plan to be more deliberate about having conversations with students instead to kick start my relationship with each student. As for #4 (team building activities), have you seen “the first 5 days” live binder and hashtag? I found some great activities there last year. Since we are both teaching a 3/4 class, maybe we could collaborate and/or share some of our activities?? Thanks again for getting me excited about going back!
Hey Tanya,
Thanks for the comment! I totally agree, getting them in those first 10 minutes is really important and I hope to try that this year, as opposed to the rules and procedures. I would love to share ideas about cool activities to start the year. I haven’t seen “the first 5 days” before, but I am excited to look into it. I would love to collaborate and share some ideas! I will let you know if I come across anything. Glad you are as excited about going back as I am 🙂
These are great ideas, Paige! I like to set the tone from the first day that thinking is valued in my room so I usually start with a see-think-wonder thinking routine. (You can read about it at http://www.philipcummings.com/see-think-wonder-6th-grade-reading-2012/.) I love the idea of doing more team building activities. I’m going to have to think about how I might do that as we get started with our reading workshop. Thanks for sharing.
Hey Philp,
I just read the post and loved the idea of see-think-wonder for the first few days. Instead of telling the kids all about me and what we will learn this year, let them discover it. I also love the idea of the exit ticket “Make a headline for the class”, great way to summarize their experience. You have me thinking about how I will use this strategy in my first week of school 🙂
Great ideas! Thanks for sharing! I do a similar activity with my teachers where we are going to create a staff quilt. We’ve also done scrapbook pages that we then put together into a large bound book. This year we are doing a digital staff “about me” storybook.
What a cool idea to make a digital storybook! What are you using to create the digital storybook? It would be cool to make that storybook available to students so they can learn more about all of the staff.
Great ideas, Paige! I agree, the focus that first day should be on discovering ‘us’ rather than discovering ‘stuff’. Those team building activities are what the kids are going to remember long afterwards. Thanks for getting me excited about starting the year off!
Thanks for the comment, Kelli! I can’t wait to collaborate with you this year and see what awesome projects we can create with the kids 🙂
Hey Paige,
Looking forward to seeing a follow-up post now that the school year has started! Which of your ideas worked? Which didn’t?
And more importantly, how do know?
Bill
PS: I’ve started to say at the end of morning announcements, “Now do WE have any important announcements?” It opens the class to sharing that they wouldn’t have the space to do otherwise — kind of like a shortened version of your morning meeting.
I haven’t got a lot of participation yet — but I’m thinking that will happen more regularly as trust builds in my classroom. In fact, that willingness to share will be the metric I use to measure trust in my room.