Building Relationships With Students

Classbuilding and Teambuilding

Why do teachers who do more Teambuilding and Classbuilding obtain higher academic scores? Teambuilding and Classbuillding  create relaxed alertness, the ideal state for learning. When students meet their needs for security and belonging, they are free to engage in higher-level learning. Disruptions and discipline problems decrease, speeding up student learning. When students feel safe, known, respected, and appreciated they enjoy school more, like their teacher more, and are more prepared to learn and work hard."  -Dr. Kagan

Starting off the year on the right foot by building relationships with your students will help your entire school year to run smoothly and successfully. I can personally attest to this, as I have had a number of students over the past few years, who I saw HUGE amounts of growth in their academics, once I had built relationships and made connections with them.  Once they knew that I was truly rooting for them and cared about them and their well-being, it gave them an extra motivation to work hard. I had a student last year who came into my class struggling, he was a bit of a disaster, struggled with behavior and academics.  After spending a great deal of time connecting with him and building relationships class-wide, by the end of the year he was one my best and MOST FAVORITE students! He excelled with growth both academically and behaviorally and said to me one day, "Miss Brown do you know why I always try my hardest now? because I know you really care about us and you really want what's best for us." It was VERY eye-opening and warmed my heart.  It's a very rewarding feeling.  Building relationships with your students truly benefits both the students and YOU as the teacher!

"When teachers are able to take the time to build a stronger relationship with their students, it's possible to create a stronger understanding of what individual students need to achieve higher levels of growth. By doing this, teachers can adapt their classroom activities to better meet the needs of students"  -Kirby Hall

Building relationships with students is a very simple way to implement behavior management in your classroom.  The closer of a bond you build with your students, the less likely they are to have behavior disruptions within your classroom. ADDITIONALLY, this also leads to students academic success.  It's  win-win!

Here's how you can get started:

 1) Start by utilizing team building structures on a daily basis the first few weeks of school.  Kagan defines these as a non-academic activity that promotes positive social interaction between small groups (table groups) in effort to get students to learn about and feel comfortable with one another. Here are some great Kagan structures that I used to support team building the first few weeks of school:

• Me Bag- Students are given a paper lunch bag and asked to take it home, fill it with a designated number of items that represent them, and bring it back to  share with their teams.
• Team Word Finder- Similar to the game Boggle, teams are given one paper that has a square grid of letters on it, they have to work together as a team to create words.  The longer the word the more points that word gets.  You can do team celebrations once the activity is finished.
• Sentence Builder- Very similar to the activity above except in this  one, students are provided with pre-cut words and have to work together as a team to build as many sentences as they can.
• Would you Rather... Kids love this! They're given a list of 2 scenarios (both kind of silly) students take turns going around the table (Round Robin) stating which they would rather do and why.     
• Team Cheers-  Have teams/table groups create a team cheer once they've had an ample amount of time to get to know each other and feel comfortable.                        

2)Classbuilding: Kagan defines Classbuilding as a structure that provides mutual support among all of the students in a class, and creates a positive context for learning.  It is important that students see themselves as part of a larger group- the class- and not just as members of one small team.  A couple of ways that I have done this within the first few weeks of school:

• Find a Friend Scavenger Hunt: A sheet is provided to each student that has a number of categories (ie favorite sport, favorite food, etc).  Students fill in their own answers and then mix around the room until they have found a friend who shares their same answers.
• Mix-Pair-Share: This structure can be used with ANY "getting to know you" type of question, have students mix around the room, pair up with a partner whose not from their table, and share their answer to the question you provided them. They can Mix and share multiples times for the same question thus, allowing them to converse with many different partners in the room.
• "Taco Bout it" Cards- Students are provided with cards to ask questions they have about the teacher, their classmates, their classroom, and the school year- they then put each question card in the corresponding bag and the teacher will pull them out one at a time, read and answer the questions, inciting discussion as it pertains.
• Community Circles: In short, this is a structure which helps teach students to communicate and share feelings in a classroom setting.  Students are to stand or sit in a whole group circle.  The teacher gives them a prompt or sentence starter where students then go around the circle (passing an object to signify their turn) and share their thoughts/feelings.  This is only done successfully when you have instilled that sense of community and safety to share among others. You want to start out with fun or simple prompts- perhaps they are only sharing a one-word answer, and then can slowly move into more complex topics.

 

Just remember that both Classbuilding and Teambuilding activites are to be non-academic and promote positive social interactions between the teacher and students.  It's NEVER too late to get started!!!

Collaboratively Learning,

Megan Brown

megan.brown@omsd.net