麻豆传媒入口

Teachers have long known that feeling safe and secure in school helps students focus their energy on learning. And the research bears that out: A found that when teachers deliberately foster a sense of belonging by greeting each student at the door of the class, they see 鈥渟ignificant improvements in academic engaged time and reductions in disruptive behavior.鈥�

麻豆传媒入口 already covered that study, and聽we鈥檝e shared many other ideas from teachers for ensuring that every student in the classroom feels like they belong.

Some of the activities below take less than five minutes. They鈥檙e divided up among the grades, but many can apply across all of the years from kindergarten to 12th grade.

Elementary School

Shout-Outs: This is a quick way for students to celebrate each other for doing a job well or for attempting something difficult. Shout-outs can be incorporated at any point in a class. First-grade teacher Valerie Gallagher of Providence, Rhode Island, rings a chime when she wants to get the class鈥檚 attention to ask who has a shout-out.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not just me as the teacher saying, 鈥榊ou鈥檙e doing well鈥欌�攊t鈥檚 a way for them to interact with each other and celebrate positivity,鈥� says Gallagher.

Friendly Fridays: Elizabeth Peterson, a fourth-grade teacher in Amesbury, Massachusetts, uses Friendly Fridays as a simple way for students to lift each other and themselves up. Peterson has her students write a friendly, anonymous note to a classmate, practice using positive self-talk, or use storytelling to give a peer a pep talk.

Sharing Acts of Kindness: Fifth-grade teacher Marissa King, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, shares two activities that encourage kindness. In the first, the teacher gives students secret kindness instructions, such as writing an anonymous note to a peer who is struggling in one of their classes.

The second activity revolves around noticing others鈥� acts of kindness: When a student sees a peer tidying up in the classroom, for example, they can post a thank you note on a shared digital 鈥渒indness wall.鈥� Both activities coach students to be kind to their peers in the hope that they鈥檒l begin to practice kindness unprompted.

Middle School

Paper Tweets: To build community in her seventh-grade classroom, Jill Fletcher of Kapolei Middle School in Kapolei, Hawaii, created a bulletin board modeled on Twitter. Students use a template to create a profile, and they enlist at least three followers鈥攁 friend, an acquaintance, and someone they don鈥檛 interact with much.

When the class does this activity鈥攚hich takes about 45 minutes to set up the first time鈥擣letcher has them respond to prompts about their current mood or new things happening in their lives, and then their followers respond.

Class Norms: Bobby Shaddox, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at King Middle School in Portland, Maine, has his students develop a set of norms for themselves鈥攁djectives that describe them as a community of learners. Having students come up with their own norms creates 鈥渁 pathway toward belonging for every single student in that class,鈥� says Dr. Pamela Cantor, founder of Turnaround for Children.

鈥淚nstead of a top-down list of rules that a teacher gives a class, these are words that we generated together,鈥� says Shaddox. 鈥淚t helps us own the behavior in the classroom.鈥�

Group Salutes: A moment shared between two or more students at the beginning or end of an activity, a Group Salute is a teacher-prompted interaction that is a quick, low-prep way to cultivate community. The shared gesture can be physical鈥攍ike a high five鈥攐r social鈥攁 teacher could ask students to express gratitude to their group members.

There鈥檚 some interesting data supporting this idea: Researchers found that NBA teams whose players touch the most early in the season鈥攈igh fives, fist bumps, etc.鈥攈ad the best records later for the season.

High School

Morning Meetings: Morning meetings have long been a staple of elementary classrooms, but they can help students in all grades transition into class. Riverside School, a pre-K to 12th-grade school in Ahmedabad, India, uses a version of morning meetings at every grade level as 鈥渁 pure relationship-building time.鈥� Bonding exercises led by teachers or students include physical or social and emotional activities, or discussions of sensitive topics like bullying.

Appreciation, Apology, Aha: As a quick, daily closing activity, students gather in a circle and share an appreciation of one of their peers, an apology, or a light bulb moment. The teacher models the activity by sharing and then asks for volunteers to speak.

鈥淭hose types of appreciations and community recognitions can go a long way toward building bonds,鈥� explains Aukeem Ballard, an educator with Summit Public Schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Rose and Thorn: At the start of class, the teacher and students take turns sharing one rose (something positive) and one thorn (something negative) each. The process takes about five minutes.

鈥淎 low-stakes thorn might be 鈥業 feel tired.鈥� Yet many students choose to share more personal items, like 鈥楳y thorn is that my dog is sick and I鈥檓 really worried about her,鈥欌�� writes Alex Shevrin Venet, a former school leader at a trauma-informed high school.

Snowball Toss: Students anonymously write down one of their stressors on a piece of paper, crumple it up, gather in a circle, and throw their paper balls in a mock snowball fight. When that鈥檚 done, they pick up a snowball and read it aloud.

鈥淭he idea is that we鈥檙e moving around. We鈥檙e able to have fun, laugh, scream, be loud, and then have that discussion about stress,鈥� says Marcus Moore, an advisory leader at Urban Prep School in Chicago.