Building Relationships with Students

We had our first early release day of the year today. While the kiddos got an afternoon off, we spent a couple hours as a staff talking about building relationships with our students. I thought it was a great way to kick off our professional development for the year. It was such a positive afternoon, and I left feeling inspired to try some new things and affirmed in what I am already doing.

Building a relationship with each student is such a critical aspect of our jobs if we want to be successful. By getting to know our students and what their lives are like outside of the classroom, we are building trust and showing them that we care about them.  The littlest things, like taking a minute each morning to listen to a student who needs positive attention, or writing a quick note home celebrating a small success, can make a huge difference in students' attitudes towards us and their school work. If you're looking for some more ideas along these lines, the Responsive Classroom Blog is a great resource for newbies and veterans alike.

One of the games we played as a staff today is a favorite of mine. I always play it on the first day of school as a "getting to know you" activity, but after today, I'm going to look for more ways to incorporate variations of it throughout the year. I call it "Skittles Sharing," but it could be played with m&ms, fruit loops, colored blocks, dice, or even the partner sticker cards I made earlier this year. Give each student a small bag of skittles, or place bowls of Skittles where students can reach them. Each student takes one Skittle of his or her favorite color. Once students have already chosen their color, show them a key like this:

Going around the room, students share according to the question asked for the color Skittle they chose. If you have the time, you can do a couple of rounds, with students choosing a new color each time.

Obviously, there's more to building relationships with our students than trivial shares like this, but knowing that one student's favorite TV show is American Idol and that another student spends all of his free time practicing for dirt bike races opens the door to future conversations that will continue to help us build personal relationships.

Just as my principal closed our staff development today, I'll end here by saying that it is absolutely possible, and critical, to build genuine personal relationships with our students while maintaining appropriate professional boundaries. We should always have high expectations and hold our students accountable for their choices, and establishing positive relationships with our students can make it easier to do so.

Of Dogs and Kids

I've spent the last month of my summer training and loving on the sweet puppy my husband and I recently adopted. Here's a picture, just in case you don't believe how cute he is:

 While I've been training him, I'm learning just as much as he is. It seems that almost every revelation I have about obedience training is a lesson that I've also learned about teaching kids in the classroom.

Dogs and kids:

• respond much better to praise for doing the right thing than to punishment for doing something wrong. The trainer that we're working with taught us to say "yes" every time he does something right, and I'm amazed at how he responds to that, even when I don't have a treat. He also gets praise as soon as he self-corrects any misbehavior.
• need to trust you all of the time and have fun around you much of the time. We've had our puppy for just about a month now, and we're starting to see that he trusts us and is excited to see us even more than other people he meets. I'm excited to see how our relationship builds over the course of the next year and beyond.
• thrive on a predictable, consistent routine. Just like my kids remind me when I forget that it's time for recess, my dog reminds me when it's time to go for a walk.
• learn best when you chunk big tasks into smaller tasks. Often, they need some think time to process an instruction. (I can see that he's thinking, "Sit... I know I've heard that before... What does it mean? Oh, yeah!" Pestering him by saying "Sit... sit... sit... sit!" only stresses him out.) They need to practice lots of repetitions before they master a skill. And then they need immediate feedback.
• can get themselves into lots of trouble when they're bored. You should see my living room floor right now.
• sometimes ask to go to the bathroom just because they're bored. It can be hard to tell whether or not they really need to go, but it's best to just let them go if there's any doubt.
• will do anything for food. Period. Enough said.

Vacation Tic-Tac-Toe

Update 4/8/16: I'm now on Teachers Pay Teachers! Please visit my store for an updated free version of Vacation Tic-Tac-Toe!

   

I often have very mixed feelings about students who take time off from school to go on vacation. On the one hand, we barely have enough class time to cover the required curriculum, and I work very hard to provide meaningful, engaging lessons that simply cannot be replaced by books and worksheets. On the other hand, though, I truly appreciate and understand the value of traveling even short distances when it comes to enriching a child's education. I wish I could travel with some of my students who have never been to the beach or on an airplane to build their background knowledge, marvel at the science that's all around, or simply discuss how we budget money on trips or at restaurants. Those are the types of experiences that I believe make learning most fun and valuable, and I know some of my students rarely get that.

So, I always feel very torn when I get a note from parents explaining that their student will be out all next week for a trip to Disney World or a visit with Grandma, and could I please send home all work that the student will miss. My first reaction is usually one of exasperation; don't these parents understand how much learning comes from the discussions and hands on experiences in the classroom that can't be packed up and sent home? I usually send home what I can (this has been one of the main uses for my textbooks!), and keep a huge list of make up work and notes for the when the student returns, and then it's a pain in the butt trying to actually keep track of everything.

I've decided that this year I will embrace these family trips as opportunities to encourage parents and students to find the educational value in their travels. Vacation Tic-Tac-Toe is a menu of activities for students to choose from while they are away from school. If they satisfactorily complete three in a row, I will exempt them from most of the work they miss while they are out (and I'll be flexible about allowing them to make up graded assignments and assessments in class).

I'm thinking that I'll pack several "vacation bags" before school starts so that I have them ready to give to a student if I get a last minute note. Inside a large ziploc baggie will be most of the supplies students should need to complete these activities, including: a copy of the menu, lined paper, blank paper, graph paper, pencils, colored pencils or crayons, and a small pencil sharpener. I'll be sure to post pictures when I assemble these.

I hope that these alternative assignments will allow students to enjoy their time off, make their trips more meaningful, provide a way for them to share their experiences with the class when they return, and alleviate some of the hassle of make up work for me!

I'm happy to share the original work file if anyone would like it! :)

First Post

Hello fellow teacher bloggers! I have spent the last four days pouring over all of your wonderful sites during every spare minute I could find. I've followed several lifestyle and photography blogs using google reader, and I'm pretty sure I did a search a few months ago for "teaching blogs" that turned up pretty slim results. Obviously I didn't dig very hard! My teacher blog binge this week began with a link from a Responsive Classroom article, and my, what a chain of dominoes that set off! I have been so inspired looking at all of the projects everyone else has been doing to get ready for the new school year. I also can't believe that many schools have already started! Makes me thankful that I still have a couple more weeks even before the teacher work week, though I know I'll be singing a different tune in May.

This will be my fourth year teaching fifth grade; that part of my blog title is true. My name isn't really Mrs. Smith, however. I'm ready to quit lurking on all of the blogs I read and start contributing to this community, but the very introverted part of me just can't relinquish too much privacy, including my real name. Plus, Smith sort of rhymes with fifth, and I like that. :)

One of the mantras I picked up early on is "work smarter, not harder." I really try to live by that idea, since time is such a sparse commodity, while still striving to provide the most meaningful learning experience possible for each student who walks into my classroom. I'm not a "cutesy" teacher... I'd never survive in kindergarten! While I like to think my classroom is attractive, neat, and organized, it could never measure up to some of the awesome themed rooms and displays I've oggled over on some other teacher blogs. I always to to weigh the benefits to students against the amount of time I might put into any project; if there's a faster, but just as beneficial way to do something, you can bet I'm on board. That also means that I've gotten pretty good about not spending much money on my classroom even though I teach in a school with a high percentage of low income families. Many of the ideas I'm planning on sharing here are low budget projects or lesson materials that I've put together myself.

My vision for this blog is for it to be a place to record my thoughts and reflections throughout the year, and I also hope that I can contribute a little bit to the supportive community of teachers that I've been peeping in on recently. I'm looking forward to making some new friends!