Building Classroom Community

The first week of school is over. This past week has been filled with community-building activities, communicating rules and procedures, and establishing routines. I'm itching to get started with curriculum, but I know that these past four days are vital preparation for a smooth year ahead. Here are some of the things I did last week for Get-to-know-you/ Community-building games: 

• Seating Challenges: Middle school students tend to stick to the people they know, especially early in the year. If allowed to choose seats on the first day, they would sit next to their friends, leaving the new kids and those who may not have any friends in the class to fend for themselves and feel left out. Not good! The series of seating challenges in this article makes sure that every day for the first 5 days of school, seating is mixed up and students work with different seat mates. It takes about 10 minutes of class time, but by the end of the 5 days, students are better able to work as a group, I have a good sense of leaders and followers, and the set-in-stone seating friendship spots are never allowed to start. It also gets students in the habit of looking at the front of the room for any instructions they need to do right away.
• Gorilla-Man-Net: This is also known as Gorilla-Man-Gun but I am trying to reduce violence in the world so we use nets instead of guns. Basically, this is a variation on
  
  rock-paper-scissors. Students stand back to back, say, "Gorilla, Man, Net, Go!" and on "Go", they spin around, assuming one of the positions-- monkey arms for the Gorilla, fashion-model pose for (hu)Man, or swing an invisible net for Net. Gorilla beats man, man beats net, and net beats gorilla. As students are preparing to play, I shout out a category, for example "food", and the winner has to tell their favorite/best, and the loser has to tell their worst. Students find new partners while music plays, and then go again with another category (movies, books, bands, vacation spot, sport, color, etc.). It's fun to end up with a whole group share, "What did you learn about someone that you didn't know before?"
• Alliteration Name Game: Although this is an old and familiar game, it quickly teaches everyone's name to everyone in the room--including me. Students think of one thing they like that starts with the same sound as their first name, for example, "Ms. Pohl likes playing piano." Students sit in a circle. One person starts, then the next person has to say the first person's name and likes before saying his/her own name and likes. This continues around the circle until the last person has to say all the students' names and likes before his/her own.
• Six-Word Memoir: The idea of telling one's story in only six words appealed to me as a quick way to learn something meaningful about each other. We studied a selection of six-word memoirs and analyzed the kinds of stories they told: passions, recent activities, life philosophies, past lives (memoirs), feelings. I shared a few of my own: "So many books, so little time." (passion), "Changing 'should' to 'am' is hard." (working on some life goals this year), "Setting up house for college boys." (the story of my summer). I had students work with partners to write one or two six-word memoirs about the first day of school as a way to practice the genre without any personal risk. I read a few aloud (anonymously). Finally, we watched Gigi McAllister's class video sharing their fourth grade end-of-year six-word memoirs to look at more examples. Students were then let loose to draft several that captured a passion, a life philosophy, or a memoir. I asked them to choose their favorite to write on a brightly colored sentence strip, which they read out to the class before sticking to the wall around the room.
• Where in the World? As international people, one of the hardest questions we get asked is,

  

  Image from 4shared.com

  "Where are you from?" On the surface, it seems easy enough, but to those of us who are expatriates, there are lots of different angles to it: Where were you born? What passport do you hold? Where do you live now? What's your "home" country? Each question could be a different answer. For those students who have mixed-culture families, it becomes even more complex. For this activity, I have students answer each of those questions above on an index card. I post continent signs around the room (excluding Antarctica). Then I call out one of the questions, asking students to go to the continents where the country of their answer resides. Once in those groups, they share where they lived, learning something new about each other. I finish with the whole group, asking, "What did you learn about someone that you didn't know before?"
• Workshop Agreements: This came on day 3 after students had done other community-building games both in my class and in other classes. We are starting the year launching Writer's Workshop, so I asked the students to think of a time when writing was going well for them, when they were immersed in their writing, ideas were flowing, it was all good. What were the conditions that allowed that writing to happen? Think of environmental conditions, mental conditions, etc. They brainstormed a list in their writer's notebooks for about 5 minutes. Then I turned it around and asked them to think of a time when writing was bad for them, stuck for ideas, unable to focus, not productive at all. What were those conditions? They wrote for another 5 minutes. Students shared out while I made one list of conditions for good and conditions for bad. I reminded them that we were a community of learners, and we needed to make some agreements for how our class would be run so that everyone was able to do their best work, which meant doing those things on the "good" side and trying to avoid those things on the "bad" side. I asked them to notice that not everything on the "good" side was something we as a class, or I as a teacher, could control, such as having a plan before writing or having too many thoughts to settle on one. But there were several things on there that we could control, so we highlighted those: quiet to work, time to get help from partners (talk time), comfortable seating/ temperature/ lighting, organized materials, good seating choice, focused and on-task behavior to meet deadlines, participation in conversations. The next day I wrote them up as agreements and went over the list, giving them an opportunity to ask clarifying questions or to object to any of the items. Finally, I asked them to give a thumbs up if they could live with those agreements. These agreements will form the foundation of my classroom management for the rest of the year.
• Reader-Writer Poster: One of my main objectives as an English Language Arts teacher is to promote lifelong habits of reading and writing. The Reader-Writer Poster is a project to
  
  showcase who students are as literate people (and as a message: Everyone in this room likes to read and write! You are a member of the literacy club!). The components of the poster are: a photo of yourself, an "about the author" blurb, a self-written one-sentence philosophy statement about reading and another one of writing, a quote from someone famous that you like, a piece of writing from the past 5 years (or excerpt), and 3-5 favorite books, each one with a short summary and a quote (and a book jacket picture if possible). One of the books is marked "favorite", and that blurb needs to explain why it's your favorite. Any program can be used to make it (a technology diagnostic assessment!), or it can be done by hand (also a piece of technology diagnostic information). Students lay them out on top of their table, and then go around the room for a gallery walk looking at others' posters. They complete a graphic organizer finding connections to other people in the room who have similar taste in books or life experiences, etc. I like finishing the class with a whole group share: "Who did you find a connection with? What was that connection?"

I had a lot of fun last week playing the games, learning bits and pieces about the kids, and watching their personalities. I will continue to learn more about them academically over the next couple of weeks as we do beginning-of-year assessments. I feel good, though, about getting the year started on a positive and fun note. We have plenty of time for seriousness!

Setting Up For a Year of Learning

Here we are again, poised to open our doors to a new batch of learners on Monday. This year, the batch of learners needs to include the middle school English Language Arts teachers as well, while we launch the implementation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) writing standards. Over the past month, I immersed myself in leadership training, learning techniques and thinking through how to help the department in this journey.

In true Understanding by Design fashion, I identified our goals:

1. Become familiar with the CCSS writing standards and related language standards, including noticing what was similar and different with our last set of standards as well as noticing what elements built up from year to year within the CCSS strands (unpacking the standards).
2. Identify and understand how to use the new Units of Study in Writing (Heinemann, 2014) on-demand performance assessments and learning progressions as tools to identify student strengths and needs (prepare for student data analysis). 
   
3. Become familiar with the new Units of Study in Writing (UoSW), including mapping out the sequence of units across the year and across curricular areas, noticing similarities and differences with our last set of units, and tips to lift the level of our teaching in those units (prepare for new teaching).
4. Make a departmental goal that guides our learning together and supports our efforts of professional growth as well as impacts student learning (goal setting).
5. Gather student data and analyze it so that it informs our teaching in ways that improve student learning (student data analysis).
6. Teach the new units, reflect and get feedback on our practice, and look for improvement in student learning (implementation of curriculum).

Our teacher inservice week focused on setting up Professional Learning Teams across all school divisions, during which we learned a cycle of continuous improvement as a way to work in our PLTs:

1. Analyze student data for areas of strength and areas of need
2. Identify a curriculum standard related to the area of need and unpack it
3. Identify a student and teacher goal to address the area of need
4. Professional learning to address the area of need
5. Implement new learning and gather assessment data
6. Analyze student data to see if student need improved

This continuous improvement cycle fits well with my goals for the department. Once we've decided the year-long calendar, we can gather student data through on-demand assessments before the unit starts, unpack the related genre-based writing standard for the unit we're about to launch, and make our student and teacher goal. We can spend our professional learning step digging into the unit itself as well as other resources such as Pathways to the Common Core and TCRWP videos. We can implement the unit in the classroom, get feedback from peer observation, and bring student data back to the team for further analysis and reflection.

I am excited by this school-wide initiative, and how it supports the work we teachers need to do this year. We have always been a strong team, and this protocol will help us become even better.