Building Rapport Activity & Games:
These are the ones I spoke to you about during class. There are lots of interactive activities and games you can play to build rapport with students and to use as a platform for building a positive classroom climate that serves to model respect, inclusion, and belonging. I highly recommend utilizing the article "The First 20 Days: Establishing Productive Group Work in the Classroom" by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey. This is from their text "Engaging the Adolescent Learner". It is a how-to list of activities to embed in your instruction during the first four weeks of school. These activities not only introduce your students to your expectations for group-work, but they also give you the "why" we need students to learn to collaborate while learning. This can be found by scrolling down this page. Some activities that I enjoy using to not only help me learn about my new students, but to also give them more insights to each other are: tableau, Last Man Standing, I Have/Who Has, Ask Mrs. T 3, and What do you wish I knew? Tableau - Before class, develop slips of paper that name some common activities that most students would recognize (i.e. riding a roller coaster, playing basketball, riding a bicycle, etc.). Divide students up (don't let them group by themselves, you want to create new connections between students) into groups of six to eight. Let the group blindly select a slip of paper. The group will then need to talk a few minutes about how they can portray this activity without moving or speaking. Then give them a few minutes to practice and work out the kinks. I usually give 10 minutes for students to work on the first one, then less time to prepare once they've got the hang of the activity. Use an online timer to keep everyone on track, then have the groups present their tableau one-at-a-time. While one group strikes their pose, the teacher should ask the other classmates questions like, "What do you see?," or "What could be going on here?" Once the viewers guess the tableau topic, congratulate the performers and move on to the next group's tableau. You can Google lists of tableau topics if you need help in developing topics. Also, I often use tableau for students to show their understanding of text. This article on the Teacher Toolkit website gives great ideas for using this activity for assessment. Last Man Standing - I begin by asking everyone in the class to stand up, then ask a series of questions (beginning with one that is very broad like "Who in the class has ever rode a school bus?" and moving into more narrow questions like "Who has a pet hamster?") If the questions describes that student, they should remain standing. If the question does not describe the student, they need to sit down. I usually say, "If you can answer yes, then remain standing, if you cannot, please sit down." The games works by students who've sat down NOT standing back up on the next question. That way you'll eventually have only one (sometimes two) student standing. Then start over with everyone standing back up. For a variation, you can just have students who can answer yes to the question stand, and those who cannot sit. This is quick, easy, and tells you a lot about your students. I Have/Who Has & Bingo - There are many easy I Have, Who Has games out there that you can use to break the ice and get students actually speaking in class. I suggest using ones based on content they would be very familiar with, like parts of speech. The same goes for Bingo games. You can also make your own of these two activities using templates on the internet. Ask Mrs. T 3 - I don't tell my students a lot about myself the first week so that they can discover things on their own. I spend the last few minutes each day the first week allowing them to ask me three questions. They are usually questions like how long I've been a teacher, am I married, do I have kids, etc. I usually get a few weird ones too like, "Do you like zombies?", or "Have you ever ate alligator?" What do you wish I knew? - At the end of September, beginning of October, I will send out a Google Form with the question, "What do you wish I knew about you, your family, or your life?" Set the form so that responses are private, and assure students that you've done so. If you learn something that needs to be acted upon, please bring the student in privately with you (and maybe a partner teacher) so that you can let them talk. They may just want to eat lunch with you to unload. They will most often want to speak to you before the counselor, unless they knew him/her before. If you need to act upon the information, you need to let them know how proud you are that they told you and how you are obligated to report this information. They know you have to, so even if they protest, they usually want you to know and help. INVITING STUDENTS TO LEARN: 100 TIPS FOR TALKING EFFECTIVELY TO YOUR STUDENTS by Jenny Edwards This book gives you LOTS of tips on how to speak positively to your students. What do you want to say to them that they'll remember forever? Just click on the title for a download of the book. Or it's a quick and inexpensive read from Amazon. 1. Get plenty of sleep (6-8 hours per night) and exercise (3x/week). I speak from experience and want you to do as I say, not as I did. This is vital to keeping your stress levels down and alertness at its peak.
2. Keep appointment times with your mentor and PLC's sacred. Don't miss them! These relationships will keep you "in the know" and support you throughout your year. 3. Plan, plan, plan - content, strategies, groupings, remediation, extension, and assessment. These are the building blocks for great lesson plans. Do not "fly by the seat of your pants" routinely. Your students will be engaged and you will have less classroom disruptions if you spend time planning for learning. 4. Make your lesson plans into scripts the first time you present them. Include vital things you need to say into script lines for yourself. Don't hesitate to use your plans as a crutch in front of students. You can hide them in legal pads, or onto clipboards. 5. Do NOT beat yourself up if you get behind in the plans your PLC has made. Speak up and get help in determining what content is absolutely necessary and what can be released. Reflect on what has happened that led to this situation. This is a great time to have your I.F. (instructional facilitator) or mentor teacher come into your classroom to demonstrate lesson pacing. 6. Be humble and willing to accept criticism and advice from administration and coworkers. This kind of input should be sought out if no one is telling you how you could improve. If you can have your I.F. watch your entire lesson and provide feedback, that is ideal. 7. Learn your content! Some days you might be just one day ahead of your students, but please remember that you are the expert and need to be fluent in your content. Don't be too stubborn to spend some time in study. 8. Be firm, yet friendly with your students. They need to know that this is your classroom and that you will enforce the rules. 9. Don't take students bad behavior personally. Most students misbehave from either attention, power, revenge, or self-confidence issues. If you'll deal with misbehavior promptly and extremely professionally (even when you feel like "blowing your stack") you'll go further in developing a mutual relationship of respect with that student. You are most likely NOT the target for the complaining, anger, frustration, etc. that the student is expressing, so don't rush to defend yourself. 10. Remember, that your best tool for classroom management and student engagement is relationship, relationship, relationship. If you'll build relationships with those students that exhibit power issues first, attention issues second, and self-esteem issues third - you'll have far fewer problems managing your classroom. This is the book version of the app that I use to reference classroom behavioral issues. I have never used the book, but I use the app frequently. It's easy to use and gives you sound, professional advice to curbing student's bad behavior at school and at home. Click on the name in bold to go to the website. The app can be found in your app store.
A Master Teacher best seller, You Can Handle Them All is a systematic, easy-to-use reference guide for educators to help them define and correct 124 student behaviors. Presented in outline form, it:
Click on the following link to see what your learning strengths are today.
I've mentioned the improvement in our writing proficiency scores after using the Units of Study for Teaching Writing 6-8. While many of you may end up teaching at the Jr. High or High School level, these units are engaging lessons that form the building blocks for good writing. These would be just as useful in the 11th grade classroom. If you end up teaching pre-AP or AP classes, you'll follow different lessons, which will build right onto these. These units of study provide your students with the knowledge to not only assess their own writing (and peers), but to analyze the components of good writing that will be used in AP work. The only things I've NOT seen addressed in these units are the more advanced literary elements and the three artistic proofs of persuasive writing. Ms. Calkins is the head of the Teacher's College - Reading and Writing Project located at Columbia University. She is also the creator of the Reading Workshop and Writing Workshop programs taught there.
The Reading & Writing Project Mini Lesson for Reader's Workshop on Perspective and POV (Video) Lucy Conferencing with a Student Over His Memoir Piece of Writing (Video) This link will take you to an article that has some wonderful advice about keeping your students engaged. Some of the advice speaks to your mindset and how you can unintentionally limit your class engagement. So much of your student's engagement is due to your relationship with them. The other items are specific things you can plan into lessons to strengthen engagement.
7 Proven Strategies |