Building Community with Students
Did you know?
The most effective schools provide a “safe, civil, healthy and intellectually stimulating learning environment. Students feel respected and connected with the staff, and are engaged in learning. Instruction is personalized and small learning environments increase student contact with teachers” (Shannon, 2003, p. 36).
There is a clear relationship between the presence of a positive classroom community and student academic motivation (McEwan, 2008).
The positive effects of community-building efforts in elementary school persist into middle- and high school (Battistich, 2001).
There exists a positive relationship between a strong sense of community in the classroom and students’ emotional and social development (Bateman, 2002). Many teachers have found regular class meetings involving all their students to be effective in building caring communities and nurturing emotional development (Doveston, 2007; Schaps, 2003).
"A teacher’s ability to relate to students and to make positive, caring connections with them plays a significant role in cultivating a positive learning environment and promoting student achievement."
–James H. Stronge, Qualities of Effective Teachers
The start of a new school year is right around the corner. You are probably gearing up for another exciting year packed with exciting lessons and learning opportunities for your students.
Each new year represents a fresh start: new faces, opportunities to improve past practices, and prospects for trying out something exciting and different to engage your students in learning.
You have a lot of material to cover this year and the temptation may be to hand out textbooks and get started. By taking a little time during the first few weeks of class to establish relationships among your students, your classroom community will pay back dividends in terms of student interest, rapport, and long-term retention throughout the year. When students feel safe and motivated they are more likely to learn.
Of course, classroom community can and should be built all year long. However, those first few weeks are most influential. Why not wow your students into an engaged learning community from day one?
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Read on for how to build community with your students On the first day of class, have students stand in a circle facing one another. If you have a large class, you might have them form two or three circles. Give one person in each circle a ball. The person holding the ball is to say his or her name and something about themselves. Advise them that something unique such as “My uncle is a bull rider” is much more memorable than something ordinary such as “My favorite color is blue.” After the student shares his or her name and something unique, he or she tosses the ball to someone else in the circle. That person then shares his or her name and something unique. Students are to keep tossing the ball until everyone has had a chance to introduce himself or herself. You can have them play multiple rounds of the game, each time sharing something new or even making a connection to another student’s comment. For example, if one student said, “My name is Colleen and I have seven dogs,” the students she tosses the ball to might say, “My name is Josh and while I don’t have seven dogs like Colleen does, I do have over 10,000 baseball cards.” Making connections like these helps students learn names and creates rapport among your students. Of course, there is a need to get started with your content during the first week of school, too. You can create community-building activities as students learn content. For instance, you might have students line up by birth month and group all the January and February birthdays together, all the March and April, and so on. Ask them to share in their groups why they enjoy (or don’t enjoy) having a birthday in that month. Then have them complete the academic task. If they have a chance to make connections with one another, they will work more efficiently together because they share something in common. In spite of our best intentions, we may find a student who does not connect with the class. In cases like this, you might use the 2 x 10 method. Take two minutes a day to talk to that person, ask questions, and listen. These two minutes are not related to behavior or how the individual could perform better. By the tenth day, most teachers report improved communication and the start of connectedness. The key to the success of this strategy is that the need to connect with the student must be important to you. If it isn’t, you may come across as manipulative rather than genuine. Best of luck as you kick off the new school year!
Bateman, H. V. (2002). Sense of community in the school: Listening to students’ voices. In A. T. Fisher, C. C. Sonn, & B. J. Bishop (Eds.), Psychological, sense of community: Research applications, and implications (pp. 161–179). New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Battistich, V. (2001, April). Effects of an elementary school intervention on students’ “connectedness” to school and social adjustment during middle school. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service ED474786)
McEwan, E. K. (2008). 10 traits of highly effective schools: Raising the achievement bar for all students. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Schaps, E. (2003). The heart of a caring school. Educational Leadership, 60(6), 31–33.
Shannon, G. S. (2003). Nine characteristics of high-performing schools. Olympia, WA: Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
Source: The above tips are based on PLS's graduate course Reading Across the Curriculum™. For more information see "Featured Onsite Graduate Course" to the right Performance Learning PLUS is a monthly e-newsletter by Performance Learning Systems© (PLS), a comprehensive educational services company that has provided a full spectrum of programs, products, and consulting services to educators and business professionals since 1971