Blog #3 - Classroom Community

 I had a wonderful experience last week while observing Ms. Jordan.  One of our fourth graders struggles so much with Lexia (a reading app on the IPad), and is constantly trying to get an aide or the teacher to help him, even though it's suppose to be "self-learning."  I've noticed that when the students think Ms. Jordan isn't watching is when she is watching the most.  At one point our student conquered a really hard section for him and yelled out in triumph "Look at how big and smart my brain is!," then he went on working.  The next day when he was struggling again he went to Ms. Jordan ;after she gave him some helpful nudges and he solved it, this time Ms. Jordan exclaimed, " Look how big and smart your brain is!"  Our little fourth grader was over the moon, to hear his same compliment given back to him, 1) reinforced his own belief in his ability, and 2) showed him that his teacher cared enough to watch him and be aware of what he was saying, enough so that the next day she could even repeat it back.  This is one of my favorite stories of how not only is my teacher making her students feel loved and safe, but also recognizing their skills.  If this was just a one time occurence, it probably wouldn't be worth mentioning, but I've seen her do it over and over and I love the looks on the student's faces each time.

One of my favorite ways I've seen of building classroom community, is currently being utilized by Ms. Jordan, but I've seen it done in other classes as well, including my own 2nd graders current class, and she can't talk about it enough.  It's the teacher vs. students team building.  Each day Ms. Jordan gives the students a theme for the day, such as giving compliments, helping a friend, or being someone's hero, etc...each time a student is caught doing this, the "students" get a point.  Each time the teacher is caught doing it she gets a point.  At the end of the week the points are tallied and whoever wins (students, or teacher) gets to pick  the Fun Friday movie.  This has been so wonderful in encouraging classroom community because it gives the kids a common goal as a class, and encourages them to work together in treating each other well and learning good core values for just being good people.

In my cooperative classroom, we have VERY set routines.  Breakfast, morning announcements, pledge of allegiance, calendar, science videos, 2 learning songs etc.  The students already, after only four weeks have these routines down pat, even to the point that today Ms. Jordan veered off the routine slightly, (did pledge of allegiance before morning announcements) and the students were extremely quick to correct her.  She apologized, admitted her mistake, and went back to announcements. (I think this alone is a fine example of building community, acknowledging that you as a teacher made a mistake and respecting the students right to correct it.)  These set routines help us have a much more productive day, because the students already know what is expected of them, and there is much less fighting, and grumbling during transitions.  I have noticed on days where their routine is broken (an assembly, fire drill, change in lunch etc) we seem to experience a lot more behaviour problems, just due the the students being off their routine and not really liking it.