Learning and Growing

Nurturing A Classroom Culture 

It's hard to believe that we are already a month into our academic school year! Where has time gone?! Believe it or not we are a month into this year. As the year progresses, we sometimes forget to continue to cultivate and foster our classroom culture with our little humans. August is all about getting to know our students but what about the other months? Can you really get to know them in only a short month? Regularly asking how their day is, how their weekend was or simply greeting them lets them know that we care about them. Sometimes it's hard to make time for this, however, we can do so in about 10 minutes or less.

Friday 5-4-3-2-1

One of my favorite things to do at the end of the month is Friday 5-4-3-2-1. It's a free resource from Presto Plans that never fails to make my entire class cheese from ear to ear (including myself). It's a short slip where students write: 

5 things that made them smile that week

4 words to describe their week
3 things they plan to do this weekend
2 things they learned this week
1 goal they have for next week

I do this as the warm-up for the day. It probably takes about 10 minutes to complete: five minutes to fill it out, then about 5 minutes to hear from everyone. They share one of the things they wrote down which then leads to a moment of reminiscing or appreciating something about our week. I've found that this activity teaches my students to be appreciative, find commonalities among others and shows them that I enjoy hearing about their lives. We wrap up this activity by gluing it in our "Memory Lane". We revisit this page about once a month when we add a new slip in our interactive notebook. It's so sweet to watch them laugh or say "oh yeah, I remember that!" while they revisit their previous slips. The cherry on top is on Monday when I get to follow up with some of my student's weekend plans. I enjoy doing this since it lets them know that I listen and care about them. The power of this simple activity goes far beyond the 10 minutes that it takes to complete. It gives my students the opportunity to share news about their lives while I model patience and deep listening in order to make connections with them.

Friday 5-4-3-2-1 Link: file:///C:/Users/nancyva/Downloads/Friday54321WeeklyReflection.pdf

Learning and Growing, 

Nancy Vargas  

nancy.vargas@omsd.net