Community Building
Building a community founded on respect, understanding, and growing together is at the core of any successful classroom. As an ESL teacher who has taught whole-ESL classrooms for six years, building classroom communities where students are taught social skills around respect, an appreciation for others, and a growth mindset where effort and struggle are valued has been a part of my teaching of which I am most proud.
The past two summers I have sought out and completed the Responsive Classroom basic and advanced training programs for upper elementary grades as part of my commitment to building classrooms based on engaging academics and positive community that is developmentally appropriate for children. Below are just some of the instructional items I have developed around these goals for my classroom.
The past two summers I have sought out and completed the Responsive Classroom basic and advanced training programs for upper elementary grades as part of my commitment to building classrooms based on engaging academics and positive community that is developmentally appropriate for children. Below are just some of the instructional items I have developed around these goals for my classroom.
Morning Messages
Below you will find 3 presentations that are examples of several morning messages that I have written for my classroom. Morning Messages are a part of daily morning meetings where community is built through greetings, sharing, activities, and a message for the day that bridges the fun of morning meeting to academic work about to take place for the day. In these you will see messages that are fun and thought provoking; others that review academic skills in a different format, and others that teach specific social skills for conflict resolution and resistance to bullying.
I Am From Poem
The presentation below serves as a model to show students how to use mind maps that they make about themselves and turn them into "I Am From..." poems. These poems provide students with a format to show something of themselves as individuals to their classmates. The teacher model I put together here is intentionally crafted to include things that most students could relate to (such as family and sports) as well as things that might seem foreign to them (such as references to my Arab heritage) which spurs a discussion about how we react to things that are new or different to us, and from there setting expectations and practicing skills that create an environment where individuality and cultural difference can be reacted to with respect and a curiosity befitting of a scholarly temperament as well as a caring neighbor.
Anti- Bullying Unit
Every student deserves a school experience that is free from bullying. So the beginning of the year always includes a unit on anti-bullying. In this unit students read books, and watch videos that touch on themes of bullying. They begin by filling out a K-W-L chart as a class about bullying. They read articles and books such as Hot Issues Cool Choices where as a class they dig deep into real world scenarios and complexities of bullying situations and reflect upon them and learn real world skills for dealing with them in a manner that is effective and mature. The unit culminates with a project choice to demonstrate a skill they have learned to deal with bullying and present it to their class. The presentation below is simply used to show and summarize the choices they have for the project, which integrates literacy skills that they would have already worked on. (note: viewing the presentation below the examples may look sidewise, if it were to be downloaded they appear upright.)
Practice of Procedures
An successful classroom is one that is predictable for students and runs efficiently. This means classroom procedures need to be drawn out, modeled by teachers and students, and practiced intentionally as class; both at the beginning of the year and throughout the year as need be. Classroom procedures are many and vary from year to year depending on individual needs of a given class. Below is a presentation I created and used one year to show students how we needed to go about moving chairs in the classroom in order to make floor space for our morning meetings.
Motivation
Our goal as teachers should be to nourish and encourage internal motivation in our students and a growth mindset that values learning through effort and mistakes. Students can vary widely in what motivates them. Below is one example of a motivation tool I have made that I present to some students for whom I feel it will be effective. It displays real life statistics about the relation between schooling and income earning for adults. It is a reality for many ESL students that they come from low income homes and many of them dream of earning a high salary when they are older, not out of selfish material want, but out of a desire to care take for families and their home communities. The explicit correlation drawn out in this presentation between school and income is indeed motivating for many students.