3 Activities to Build a Positive Classroom Environment this Fall
As educators, we all know the importance of establishing a solid and nurturing classroom environment early in the year. A good classroom environment drastically reduces behavior problems, allows students to feel more comfortable taking educational risks, and helps foster inclusivity. We all know a positive classroom environment is invaluable, but the million dollar question is
HOW DO WE BUILD IT?
Here are three activities to help get off on the right foot on the first day of school!
1. Be genuine.
I honestly think that this is the number one golden rule when building a classroom culture is being yourself. I think it is important to be age appropriately transparent with your students and help them see you as a real person who has a family, and responsibilities, and challenges, and failures, and not just an authority figure.
With this in mind I always start the year by sharing a little bit about my life. I show photos of my family and explain my interests and dislikes. This is something that I continue to do throughout the year. It is not a one and done event.
I also allow students to bring photos of their family into the classroom as well. I love being able to welcome our families into our classroom home for the year. Some students keep them in their pencil box, some put them in their locker, and some have added them to our class bulletin board. I believe that being allowed to bring a photo into the classroom gives students a better sense of ownership over the classroom.
I also think it is incredibly important to show students your coping mechanisms and be transparent when you make a mistake. Apologizing to a student when you make a mistake is so powerful. Or showcasing your self-regulation strategies in real-life events also helps students to see that the classroom is a safe space for everyone to have emotions.
A few months ago, I was having a very frustrating day. My lessons weren’t going well, my students were bouncing off the wall, and I had a headache. I could feel the pressure in my head building and I knew I was about to lose my cool. Instead of yelling or crying (the two things I felt like doing), I told my students that I was extremely overwhelmed and overstimulated and I needed three minutes alone at my desk to take deep breaths. After the three minutes I felt better and we had a talk about how sometimes we need to cope with our emotions, even when we are adults.
Being honest and genuine with my students has always had a positive and beneficial impact in our classroom. Relationships work both ways, and if we want students to be vulnerable with their learning, we have to be a little vulnerable too.
2. Get to know your students
We have all heard it: building relationships is so extremely important! You cannot begin creating relationships without first learning about your students!
The first few days of school, I like to do a fun activity or craft to learn about the interests of my students. My current favorite is having them decorate a paper water bottle with stickers that represent them. With the current water bottle trends going on, they feel very cool being able to have their own Stanley cup.
Once they have decorated a Yeti, Stanley, or Hydroflask water bottle by drawing their own stickers on it, they can write about each sticker to explain how each sticker represents them. The pages are then stapled into a booklet and we display them on our class bulletin board!
There are so many fun craftivities to get to know your students. If you are interested in doing the water bottle activity you can grab it below!
3. Get creative with partners
Partnering students off can be tricky. I almost never let my students pick their own partners. Some kids gravitate towards others that they clearly can not handle working with, and there are always a few kids left out.
That said, we use partners for EVERYTHING in my class. My students are constantly discussing their thinking and bouncing ideas off one another. For this reason, we need to have lots of partner pairings. To have successful deep conversations, each student in your classroom needs to feel comfortable sharing their thinking with every single student in your classroom.
To accomplish this, I make sure we are shifting partners often in the first few weeks. A fun way to mix up partners is by playing a game we call “mingle”. This game is simple and effective! To start, the class begins doing the cha cha randomly around the room and we all sing “mingle, mingle, mingle” to the conga song. While the kids are moving around the room I will shout out a direction for pairing, such as “find someone with a similar color shirt as you”, or “find someone with a birthday in the same month as you”. NOTE: NEVER USE PHYSICAL APPEARANCE TO PAIR UP STUDENTS. I only use interests or clothing types or colors.
Mingle is fun and keeps the partners moving quickly. Before I have partners discuss an academic question, I also have them answer something fun and random with their partner to get them comfortable (would you rather eat a peanut butter pickle sandwich, or a brussell sprout grilled cheese?).
Having an experience working with each student in the class helps the class as a whole to feel more bonded together. If they feel comfortable with their classmates, they will be more willing to be vulnerable while discussing academic topics.
Putting the work up front to create a safe and welcoming classroom culture will pay off in spades later on in the year. While these are three activities you can do the first few weeks of school, building a classroom culture is a year round event. Trust and relationships don’t happen overnight in real life, and they won’t in the classroom either.
Let us know if these activities worked for you!
