Building Community in the Classroom is one of the most important things you can do when you start a new school year. Moreover, it is an important thing to continue to build throughout the year.
Figuring out how to best build a classroom community may feel like a lot of work at times. Every year you have new students. New students will mean new personalities. Therefore, something that worked well in previous years may not connect as much with current students.
While specific activities may need to shift from year to year, there are 5 core areas that are always important to focus on when creating a classroom community:
- Creating a student-centered classroom
- Building positive peer-to-peer relationships
- Creating awareness of their roles in and out of the classroom
- Building confidence in individual students
- Building a positive whole class environment
Creating a Student-Centered Classroom
Creating a student-centered classroom is one of the best things teachers can do when building a classroom community. It can also be one of the most difficult for teachers to do.
Part of making a student-centered classroom means giving up some of the control as the teacher in how the classroom looks. For example, rather than spending time creating cute bulletin boards that are aesthetically pleasing – using student work to build bulletin boards.
This can be difficult for teachers because it means starting the school year with blank walls. While this means you get more time for YOU, it also means possibly feeling a little unprepared. It also means you may have to give-up having the “cutest” room.
These can be difficult things to let go of as a teacher. Especially if you have been teaching for a long time. However, if you are willing to give it a try – we promise it is worth it!
Many of the activities you do during the first week of school can be used to create a student-centered room. You can post responses to getting to know activities. You can also have them help you create posters or even the alphabet letters!
In addition, creating a student-centered classroom helps establish a good base for effective classroom management.
Build Positive Peer to Peer Relationships
An important part of building a classroom community is building positive relationships between students. Sometimes students (and even teachers) think this means that everyone has to be friends. This is not true.
While we would all love for everyone to be friends, that is not reality. Most teachers are not even friends with every teacher they work with. It is helpful when every teacher has a positive and respectful working relationship with one another though.
This is the attitude we like to take when helping students create relationships in the classroom. They don’t have to be friends with every single student. However, they do need to be respectful. They need to show kindness to one another. They also need to feel comfortable working with one another. Especially so you can use small groups and partner work.
Small groups and partner work are two of the best teaching strategies around! They help students develop healthy social skills, while also improving student learning.
To get the most from group work though, students need to feel comfortable working with everyone in the class. Therefore, it is important to include at least one activity at the beginning of the year where students can talk to every person in the class.
One of our favorite activities to help develop these relationships is to use compliment cards. Compliment cards also help establish a classroom culture of kindness right away.
In addition to compliment cards, our team building bundle has other great activities designed for community building all year long.
Download our Mastering Classroom management E-book
Building Confidence in individual students
One of the best ways to help students feel comfortable with working with other students in class is to help each student build their own confidence!
Even from as early as kindergarten, helping students develop confidence is important. It helps with their social skills. It also helps them to be the best learner they can be.
When we were teaching, our favorite way to instill confidence in our students was to teach them about growth mindset. We found the best way to introduce students to a growth mindset was through reading.
There are so many amazing early childhood books that teach a growth mindset! Here are three of our favorite growth mindset read alouds:
After teaching students what a growth mindset is, help them practice having this mindset. A great introductory activity is “I Can’t Do That Yeti!” This is also a great activity to use in building a student-centered classroom.
Building Whole Class relationships
In addition to focusing on individual relationships, it is important to build a whole class community.
Building a community from a whole class perspective helps create a learning environment that is more consistently engaged.
Beyond helping to establish a strong classroom community, a positive whole class relationship also helps with classroom management.
In the many decades between us, there is one whole class community building activity that we found to be the most effective. Morning meeting!
Morning Meeting is magical! It includes everything you need for a positive classroom community.
It includes opportunities for students to get to know one another. It allows for students to build confidence by leading morning meeting. It helps students learn about routines (another great classroom management strategy).
If you only choose one thing to use to build a positive classroom community, make it morning meeting! Read more about How to Start Morning Meeting in your classroom.
Creating Awareness of Other Communities
Even though students spend most of their time in your room, they are members of other communities. Therefore, creating an awareness of their other communities can help create more awareness in the classroom.
Here are our favorite resources to teach students about communities. Some of these are focused on the school community. Other activities are about outside communities.
- My School Community Learning Quest
- Places in the Community
- Community Helpers
- Citizenship Learning Quest: Being a Good Citizen
Every group of students will be different, but you can create the best classroom environment for each group of students by finding activities that focus on the areas above.
