The first days of the year can serve multiple purposes for student and teacher, if they are approached intentionally. For students, this is a time to find out how they will be treated by a teacher. Will they be heard and valued? Or will they be treated like a line in a grade book? Focusing on building relationships with students in the very first days of school can let them know that you care about them and give them a reason to keep coming back. For the teacher, these days can be used for what I call data collection in disguise. Students come to us with Funds of Knowledge, things they know how to do and things that will motivate them to learn more. As teachers, if we can better understand what makes our students tick, we can go a long way towards building relevance in the classroom to improve motivation and learning. Below are a few ideas for ways to get the year off on the right foot.
- In the book, Closing the Attitude Gap, Baruti Kafele discusses the masks that students wear each day to face the world. One important aspect of building a safe place in your classroom is helping your students take off these masks when they come to school. My husband, and fellow teacher, John Burkhart used this idea to create an opening day activity. Discuss the idea of masks with your students. Then ask each student to create a two sided mask. On one side, what do they show the world to get to class safely every day, on the other side, what are the things that they see as their talents or abilities that they want to be free to share in class. When students finish their mask, ask for volunteers to share their masks and discuss them.
- In the book, Teach Like a Pirate, Dave Burgess shares his activity for the second day of school. Students enter to Play-Doh on their desks and they are asked to create something that represents them and then share it with their group or the class. This activity lets students see that your classroom is a fun environment and they are valued members, while giving you some insight into your students' interests. Your local dollar store is a great source for inexpensive Play-Doh or modeling clay.
- The Jar of Life is a presentation introduced by Franklin Covey that can start a discussion about time management and more importantly, the things that really matter to your students. The teacher facilitates the presentation and asks student volunteers to add things to the jar. Then, after the presentation, students work in small groups or partners to make a tree map of what would be their stones, pebbles, and sand in their lives and then they share out with the class as a whole.
- What did you do this summer? It’s a simple question that we all ask our fellow teachers when coming back to school. Why? Because when you care about someone you want to understand their experiences and what makes them tick. So it only makes sense that we would also ask our students. One of the amazing teachers that I work with, Kathy Fett, has created a way to support students’ language skills while they share their summer experiences that I like to call, Through My Eyes. Students are given a piece of paper with sunglasses on it and asked to fill in the sunglasses with what they did over the summer. Many students will struggle to answer the seemingly simple question, “What did you do this summer?” if they are not given time to collect their thoughts or given a visual support to help communicate what they would like to share. This fun activity provides both of these important scaffolds without making them obvious to students.
- The scavenger hunt activity, Find Someone Who..., is a classic way to get students working together and breaking the ice. Each student is given a worksheet that looks like a bingo board. Students travel around the room and find peers that fit the descriptions in each square. I like to tell students that they can't have any names repeated and they are the only ones that can write on their paper. This way they have to talk to at least 12 people and they cannot just hand off their paper along the way. When you collect the sheets at the end of the day you have a great source of information about your students. This activity can even be made into a pre-assessment by asking questions about your content area, for example, "Find someone who can explain the scientific method.
- Creating a Time Capsule is a fun way to bookend the year with your students. Have students complete a simple survey about their current interests. On the back of this paper I have students write a letter to their future selves about what they hope to accomplish this year. Then collect the papers and you have another great source about your students' interests. Keep the surveys and at the end of the term have them repeat the activity, then give back their original. You can even have them create a double bubble Thinking Map to compare and contrast their past and future selves.
- Sometimes the first days of school can be overwhelming for students. Especially towards the end of the first week when they have been inundated with new information and new people. At times like these I like to focus my bell-work on helping students to relax and breathe. That's when I bring out my Getting to Know you Pages. Students enter to calming music and dimmed lights with instructions to complete the page on their desk silently. I give students five to ten minutes to sit quietly, think about things that make them happy, and color. Yes, color. I know that it's high school but sometimes we all long for simpler times. I've found that students sometimes like to have a little taste of years gone by in their class, and these pages fit the bill perfectly. After students have had a chance to relax and complete their pages I have them share out with their groups and ask for volunteers to share with the class. And once more, we have more information about how to make our classroom activities more relevant to student interests.
- You may also want to consider helping students identify their own learning styles. Odessa College in Texas has an inventory that students can score themselves to find out if they tend to be Visual, Auditory, or Tactile learners. This activity can help students in the Assessment for Learning process and it can help you to plan lessons that address the needs of students. Alternatively, you may want to use a personality test if your focus is on learning which students might work best together. Or maybe, do both!
These suggestions are just a sampling of the fun you can have getting to know your students and understanding how to make your classroom relevant to your specific classes. For even more ideas you could visit reslife.net or search for terms like "ice breakers" and "team builders" - students will think their fun, and you'll have the chance to build relationships through relevance.
