After a break or a long weekend, you may feel somewhat meaningful on the first day of school. Although you know those bright, shiny faces pretty well now, you may notice there is a sense of disconnection from one another.
Strengthening harmony practices will serve to remind students of the welcoming and inclusive classroom that you’ve all been working so hard to create. Here are our quick team-building tips to implement now, or any time the kids are in need of a good refresher. Here are some tips that will help you to make a quick team-building.
1. Meet up
Early in the day, you have a meet-up session as a way to check in with everyone. You should allow your students to share their memory and ask questions about their time spent over the break. You can kick it off by sharing a story of your own when students are feeling shy. Afterward, you can give students some quiet time to draw a picture and recap their stories and writing assignments with their buddies.
2. Buddy up
Start by reintroducing the buddy up grid you created, and remind students of whom their buddies will be for the week. Have them get together with their buddies and carry out a Quick Collaboration to get acquainted.
3. Talk it out
Pull out your Quick Conversation Cards and create a fun game to play as a whole group. Put a handful of cards into a bag and go around the room and have each student grab a card out of the bag and ask a thought-provoking question to the student sitting next to him or her.
4. Get moving
There’s nothing that gets a group reconnected more than giving them the opportunity to move around and interact with each other. It also helps to increasing student ownership in classroom.
Question toss
Everyone writes a general question on a piece of paper, signs his or her name, and crumples it into a ball. Then, students form a circle and toss the questions into the center. Next, everyone chooses a question, finds the person who wrote it, and answers it.
Category call out
Someone announces a category and everyone forms groups as fast as possible based on their answers.
Inspire students to interact with one another, so they quickly become reacquainted and passionate to learn and participate. Devote your first day back from a break to rebuilding relationships that may have been forgotten after spending time apart.
Other Assignments
