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

Cooperative Beginnings!

Cooperative Beginnings!

Using Cooperative Learning structures truly is essential for student learning, when implemented correctly.  The power behind watching students learn, think, and grow from their peers is indescribably rewarding.  I often get asked when people visit my classroom “How do you get your students to this higher level of thinking/discussing?” It’s not easy and it DEFINITELY doesn’t happen overnight.  But today I’d like to share with you some tips, ideas, and structures that will help you get your kiddos there too! 

Why do we need cooperative learning? 

“Students taught with cooperative learning have a more enjoyable learning experience and are more motivated to continue learning beyond school, especially from and with others.” -Dr. Kagan

“Scores of empirical research studies demonstrate cooperative learning enhances the quality of reasoning, the developmental level of thinking, meta-cognition, quality of problem solving, creativity, and social perspective taking.”

I have personally seen my students already making leaps in collaborative conversations in just the 7 weeks we’ve been in school.  Their conversations are starting to become more organic, many of them are starting to not need to use the Accountable Talk Cards anymore.  Collaborative conversations is one of those “go slow to go fast” ideas.  We spend a lot of time on the baby steps the first few weeks of school from Teambuilding, to small partner share structures, leading into team structures, and then successfully having academic collaborative conversations.  I have already seen an improvement in many of my students' confidence levels.  They feel comfortable talking and sharing in their groups, as well as asking for help when they need it.  I am also starting to see my students naturally working collaboratively on their own even when I haven’t instructed them to do so.   I hear them giving their peers positive specific praise even when not directed to! It’s super cute! We still have a ways to go to get to that higher level of collaborative thinking but these kids are off to a great start! If this is something you’ve been thinking about doing more of in your classroom, I HIGHLY encourage you to start today!

“Teachers using cooperative learning find teaching less stressful and and find renewed desire and energy to teach.  Many report they were facing burnout until they discovered cooperative learning and now look forward to, and take joy in, teaching.”

This is the process I go through when starting off the year, to start building successful collaborative conversations:

1.  Teambuilding: Teaching students to work in harmony with one another to complete a task.  This is a very important step!(see my last blog)

2.  Accountable Talk: I give the students and also display “Accountable Talk” frames, and MODEL, MODEL, MODEL, how to use them in conversations, as well as positive praise!

3.  Kagan Partner Structures: In addition to Teambuilding, it’s important to introduce partner structures right away.  I start with Rally Robin, Rally- Coach, and A/B partners to get students used to working with a partner on academic tasks.  Once this is being done successfully, I move into structured Collaborative Conversations with groups.

4. Kagan Group Structures: Once students have learned how to work collaboratively with a partner, giving positive feedback, working together cooperatively, etc, then I move into team structures.  I start with Kagan structures such as: Talking Chips, Round Robin, All-Write-Round-Robin, Numbered Heads Together, and RallyTable, just to name a few.  Implementing structures like these frequently and consistently really reinforces students working together to accomplish a common goal.

5.  Start Small with Conversations: In the beginning, I will simply display the weekly Essential Questions from Wonders and have students use their notes and cite text evidence to answer/discuss that question within their table groups.  Once they get the hang of this process and how a conversation works, I will move onto more complex tasks, such as Philosophical Chairs and Socratic Seminar (these both involve higher level thinking and discussion skills). 

6. High Level Conversations: I will start to have students analyze and synthesize across multiple texts in order to develop their own original stance, thoughts, or opinions using text evidence to support their ideas.  They learn to build on the ideas of their peers.   These types of discussions generally lead to culminating writing activities such as a RACES constructed response or essay following the discussion.  These types of discussions really prepare students to be successful with their writing, citing text evident, and just communication and social skills in general.

Collaboratively Learning,

Megan Brown

megan.brown@omsd.net

Teambuilding with Kagan!

Teambuilding with Kagan!

My kiddos sharing the contents of their "Me Bags"
within their table groups

In order to build a sense of community and trust within your classroom, team building should be done every day for at least the first week of school.  After that it is recommended that it be done twice a week to help students maintain that sense of trust.  Team Building should be non-academic in nature, and a task that requires all members of a group to participate in order to complete the task.

Teambuilding creates enthusiasm, trust, and mutual support, which in the long run leads to more effective academic work!   -Dr. Kagan

Effectively organizing teambuilding activities, can help the child who feels the most unsuccessful become the MOST successful member of the team. Every student gets to contribute his/her own skills to better the group as a whole.  I have seen the quietest students blossom into being more active participants in their group and in class in general, which of course then leads them to academic success as well. In the video below you can see my students participating in Kagan Teambuilding activities the first couple weeks of school.  They shared “Me Bags” with their groups, they also participated in the Team Sentence building activity, the Team Word Finder activity, and the About Me Question Cards- just to name a few!  ALL students were engaged and excited to participate with each other. Now being ONLY 3 weeks into the school  year my students are ALREADY working together cohesively in teams, and not just when I ask them to! They are already comfortable enough that they are naturally gravitating towards teamwork even when I haven’t prompted them to do so.  Just today during a teambuilding activity, I heard one of my students say to the other one “Look! Zolin came up with the word “due.” That was a good word Zolin!” It was super cute, and exactly the type of encouragement, feedback, and respect that I hope to build into my students!

Kagan says that through teambuilding students get to know, like, and respect their teammates. Student teams meet some of students most important needs: to feel known; to feel liked; to feel accepted; to feel a sense of belonging; and to be successful. Here are the 5 essential components that Kagan suggests are needed to develop cohesive teams:


1.  Getting Acquainted: Getting to know your teammates.  I used the “Me Bag,” and the “About Me Questions” activities from Kagan, to help implement this structure (seen in the video above).  

 2.  Team Identity: Forming a team identity.  You can have students create team names, posters, cheers, etc.  I have my kiddos come up with team cheers.  They love doing this, and they come out super cute.  I also used the “Team Word Finder” and the “Team Sentences” activities from Kagan to reinforce this as well.

 3. Mutual Support: Feeling supported by teammates. Helping students create a feeling of mutual support when they know that they can and need to rely on each other.

 4.  Valuing Differences: Clarifying and respecting differing values.  These are activities that clarify an individuals own values and beliefs and help students come to an understanding where they respect each other’s individuality and differences.

 5. Developing Synergy: Building on teammates contributions. These are tasks that encourage students to build on each other’s ideas.  When cooperatively working in a group, the group product can be better than the product of even the most accomplished individual.  You want your students to reach this level of cooperative learning in order to maximize their learning experience. 

Collaboratively Learning,

Megan Brown

megan.brown@omsd.net