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Building Classroom Community
Classroom Quilt
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To begin the year, each
student in the class decorated a square piece of cloth with
their name and picture. The students were given time to share
with their peers. During this time each child introduced him
or herself and then shared a couple of things about
themselves. Once everyone had a chance to share, we piled up
all of the squares and talked about how each of the squares
could help to keep us warm. We soon realized that alone the
individual squares could not help us too much. As a group, we
decided to put all of the squares together into one large
quilt. Just as all of the small pieces played a part in making
a big blanket, every person in our class plays an important
role in our circle of friends. |
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Good Morning Hand Shakes
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Each morning the
children begin their day with a good morning cheer. They cheer
Good Morning by yelling out each letter in the spelling of the
two words followed by a clap. It sounds like the old school
yard cheers. ( G- O O D
M- O R N I N G, Good Morning, Good, Good,
Good, Good Morning ) After the cheer I ask the children to
give me a thumbs up to
show how they are feeling that morning. It gives me a good
indication of how the children are feeling and any problems
that may need to be addressed. From there, the children stand
up and give four other children good morning handshakes. A
good morning handshake is when, you look your partner in the
eye, shake hands, say good morning, give your partner a
compliment and tell them how you are doing. We worked very
hard at the giving compliments part of this exercise. We did a
lot of role playing and modeling. This is a nice way for the
children to interact positively with one another. It also
helps to always start the day off on a positive note. Once all
of the handshakes are complete, we gather and share
compliments that were shared. |
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Our Classroom Promise
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In order to create a
safe learning environment, we created a classroom promise. It
took us three days. On the first day we developed a list of
all of things that we needed in a classroom to make it
perfect. On the second day, we organized those things into
three charts, things that would make the classroom safe for
our bodies, safe for our hearts, and safe for our minds. On
the third day, we role played and acted out all of the things
that we brainstormed. I took pictures of the children as they
did this. From there, we wrote out our promise on a heart and
then we signed it. We displayed all of the things that we need
to do to make our classroom perfect in picture form around it.
This promise serves as our set of class rules as well as our
creed. Our promise reads: We promise our class will be safe
for our hearts, safe for our bodies, and safe for our minds. |
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Star Child
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Star Child is a
fantastic exercise which encourages the children to get to
know one another and allows the teacher to get to know the
students a little bit better as well. To begin with, each
child is assigned a day. On his or her special day, they get
to be on the Star Show. On this show, the children, or the
audience get to ask questions to the star child. For example,
what is your favorite color? What do you like to do? What
color are your eyes? After all of the questions have been
answered the studio audience creates a paragraph about the
star student using both modeled and shared writing. The star
child takes pleasure in leading the class as they read the
star chart together in a shared read. At the end of the day, I
copy the paragraph onto a piece of paper and put it up on the
wall. For the duration of a week, we practice reading the
paragraphs up on the wall. At the end of the star show, when
all of the children have had a turn, we bind all of the
paragraphs together into a book. This activity was taken and
adapted from the book Phonics Month by Month Grade One. |
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Bring in the back pack
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This was an activity
used at the start of the year for the students to get to know
each other. To begin with, I brought in a backpack full of
things that were special to me and that described me. I took
each one out and shared them with the class. After this, I
gave each child a brown paper bag, and access to a large stack
of magazines. Their job was to create a bag that described
them. They could draw pictures, cut pictures out of magazines,
or create small paper objects to go in the bag. Each child had
a bag full of stuff that described them. From there, we paired
off and shared our bags with another person. Then we found new
partners and shared again. This last time, we created a book
page using pictures about what each partner shared. |
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A Circle of Friends
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Our classroom is a
circle of friends. To set this up we began the year with a
friendship celebration. At this celebration we each decorated
a rock with our name and a way that we could be a good friend.
We also shared the story, The Rainbow Fish. As a finale
to the celebration, we blessed each member of the class into
our circle of friends. This means that we are a whole and that
we agree to try to work together and to make others hearts
feel good. To bless each other, we passed a bowl of water
around the circle and after a child got blessed with a cross
and the words, Help me be a good friend. he turned and
blessed his neighbor. After our blessings we learned the song
Friends are like Flowers. Now, when a guest enters our room,
we bless them into our circle of friends with the song, and a
small cross upon their forehead. |
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