SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL LEARNING

14 Ideas to Build a Positive Classroom Community

Last Updated 30 September 2023/ By Zineb DJOUB

Our major concern is to support students to learn through clarifying instructions and providing constructive feedback. But, have we ever thought about how to build a positive classroom community? A community where students feel a sense of belonging own more responsibility for their learning, share respect with their teacher and peers, collaborate, and show commitment for the benefit of the whole group.

Within such a kind of community, students get more motivated to learn, feel more secure to take risks, and are more attentive and engaged.

So, building a positive classroom community needs to be every teacher’s intent because it is not just the key to classroom management, but it is the glue that holds together healthy relationships between teachers and students and among students themselves.

To support you in building a positive classroom community, here are 14 ideas that can inspire you.

1. What I want to say to my Teacher

This activity allows your students even the introverts to express themselves freely and get their voices heard.

Students write letters to you in which they can talk about their needs, their feelings about their learning (their progress, their relationship with their peers, exams, etc.), and their attitudes (their beliefs, and opinions towards learning and behaviours).

You can have a posting board in the classroom where students can post their letters whenever they like. You can also give them the 3 cards to fill in which you can get here. Check out regularly this board to collect them to read about your students and know more about them and how they are getting along with their learning.

2. I’ve Got a Message for You

Now it is your turn to communicate something to your students by sending them letters. Your message content and purpose differ.

You can warn those students who are misbehaving, congratulate or praise students for their efforts and success, provide pieces of advice based on your classroom observation of your students’ learning, or behaving (personal advice), or a piece of information you want to communicate to that student, etc.

You can have a box where you put your letters. Whenever there is a letter for a student, you call his name at the end of the lesson to take it out of the box. The student receives a red card (where you write your message) in case of misbehaving or doing something wrong, a green one in case of good work, and a blue one if you advise or communicate something else. You can email the same letter to his/her parents.

3. All in the trash

Students write about their feelings, opinions, ideas, behaviours, habits, and all the things they have decided to get rid of on pieces of paper. You can have a kind of trash where students can throw them away. So, students are free to write about whatever thing they need to discard and say the why while indicating their names. Reading them can help you find out about what is happening to them: personal problems, relationships with their parents, friends, peers, etc.

4. A classroom portrait

This activity aims to make students feel and care about each other. It also intends to break up the routine and bring some fun to students’ learning.

Each month, a group of students is supposed to provide a classroom portrait in which they depict what happened during this month, i.e., incidents related to students’ learning (these can vary from funny to serious ones), students’ opinions, attitudes, and impressions towards learning materials, lessons, teachers’ reactions, etc.

To do so, members of the group need to get their peers’ opinions regarding lessons’ content, marks, exams, etc., and they note down those incidents that took place during the month. It is preferable to give your students the choice to select their group members so that they can collaborate more effectively. The best group’s portrait is rewarded at the end of the term.

5. We are here to help!

This is a group of students who volunteer to help their peers. They can help those who were absent by giving them the lessons they missed and explaining to them during breaks. They can answer questions of those who attended but need more clarification.

Their support can also cover introducing new students to the school, clarifying for them its regulations, reminding students of assignment deadlines, and supporting them in understanding instructions.

They can act as an intermediary between you and your students; informing you of any problem students are facing, their needs, and questions and letting students know about any important announcements you need to make about the school, parents’ conferences, etc.

How are these students selected? You need to inform your students about the tasks this group is supposed to perform. Being serious, responsible, showing empathy, and being good at learning are important qualities each member should have. Do not select students, but give them the choice to handle such a task.

The group is supposed to provide you with a monthly report of all the accomplished tasks. At the end of each term, students vote for the members who should stay and those who should leave the group based on their efforts and work. Other students are invited to integrate. But, if you see that the group is not doing much to help the rest of his class you can plan for this election before.

6. We care about each other

You can show how much you care about your students, and encourage them to care about each other through :

• Shaking hands with your students at the door and asking them to shake hands with their peers,
• students offering each other greeting cards of their own design during holidays, special days, etc.,
• students helping each other with tasks, explaining and working together to accomplish them,
• singing (also singing happy birthday to students), meditating together,
• celebrating special events and taking photos together,
• sending a classroom card (your students write it with your help) to a student who is absent because of an illness, an accident, etc., and you will welcome him/her back,
• having time for your students to listen to their problems and concerns. Not just meeting them in the hall, but devoting meeting sessions to talk to them individually.

7. Our graphic of the unit

This is an interesting activity that allows students to visualize what they have learned and collaborate to make their ideas clear.

At the end of each unit; a group of students provide a graphic representation of all what they have seen within that unit and present it in class, explaining and answering others’ questions (a kind of revision).

You can select the groups’ members and ask them to select the unit they like to present. You need to have those groups scheduled in advance so that students know what they are supposed to present and when. Still, you need to :

• explain to them how to make those graphics and show them models,
• clarify to them the process,i.e., how they need to take visual notes during the lessons,
• stress the importance of sharing roles within the group and respecting deadlines,i.e., making their graphics available to all students on the presentation’s day.

The best graphic is posted in the classroom and its group members are rewarded.

8. The best pair

This aims to encourage students to work in pairs and develop social strategies such as cooperating, turn-taking, peer correcting, etc.

Give your students the choice to select from a number of projects to work on individually. These can include, for instance, designing a given booklet, conducting a survey, doing an experiment that relates to your subject matter, etc. Then, you can use one of these activities or both of them :

1) Put students in pairs. Each pair of students has selected different tasks. This means that the students who are paired up do not share the same project. Still, they are asked to work together to connect both projects in a way that makes them complementary. Your support is required here mainly with elementary school students.

2) After each student has completed his/her project, in pairs they exchange their work and present it in class. So, each one has to do his best to present properly the other student’s work. This requires students’ collaboration to explain to each other both their project process and outcome.

For both activities, each pair has to indicate when they are ready to present their work, by completing the following chart. You can make it each Friday  “Friday Pairs”, and decide the number of pairs who are to present, the time devoted to that, and how the best pair is rewarded.

9. My class project

Think about a project all students can do throughout the whole year and talk about this initiative with your colleagues. A class project needs to focus on an important topic related to the school (like discipline, sanity, digital citizenship, safety, etc.). Students collaborate to create ideas and tools to sort out common issues.

All students are concerned and roles are assigned to each group in the classroom. Each term you check out students’ work and track their progress. At the end of the year, students in each class select a group of students to present their work.

10. Peer-feedback

Change the way you correct students’ work and provide feedback. So, opt for peer feedback from time to time with homework, or assigned tasks. When you hand out those works for correction, hide the students’ names, then put them in pairs to exchange feedback and learn from each other.

11. Student reflection

Ongoing students’ reflection on their learning can support them to find out about their needs, communicate them, and set effective goals to meet them. Reflection is thus an important tool to connect teachers and students. Using a Student reflection worksheet can make the process more systematic and effective. Here you can find an example: Student Reflective Worksheet: Lessons

12. Positive classroom community bulletin board

This kind of board describes the values on which a positive classroom community is based. It can support students to understand their roles within this community and remind them of that. Interested in creating this board, you can get it here.

13. Welcome to our classroom

This intends to strengthen students’ sense of belonging and stress the importance of having a positive classroom community by describing its benefits on students’ learning.

14. V.I.P

A V.I.P. can include one of these characteristics: respectful to everyone, collaborative, tolerant, and supportive ( volunteers for we are here to help can be VIPS). You can choose 3 VIPS a week and give each a V.I.P badge all week. Four badges are available depending on how the student has contributed to building a positive classroom community. It is also possible to give more than one badge to the same student. Visit my store here to get these badges.