Most experienced teachers, and a lot of research, will tell you that students who feel they are part of a community learn better. In fact, students who feel they are free to be themselves and that they have somthing to contribute, where they opinions are valued and welcomed, feel more comfortable taking learning risks.
Setting up a sense of community has some similar components regardless of the grade, as well as have some specifics depending on the grade. As a high school teacher, I have experienced classes made more rich for having set community expectations or ways of working (WOW). The way I do this is step one: I have students in small groups discuss and answer some questions: What do you need to feel safe in this classroom? What does a safe classroom look like/what would you see in a safe classroom? What are your values?
Step two: From these three questions students suddenly feel seen and heard, they have a say in what goes into our WOW document because then I ask students to write on the board the answers to the questions. As a whole class we discuss what is on the board, we give explanations for ideas or words we don’t fully understand, we agree or disagree. When there are no more questions or items to be added. Step three: I take the information from the board and write a WOW statement.
Step four: I show the class the statement I wrote based on their input. Students in their table groups edit it if they feel it needs it. This is the final step so we take time to make sure it sounds like something each student can work with. The next day we start class reading the WOW statement and we commit to working with this the whole semester. I refer to the statement often in class so students are reminded of how we agreed to work at the beginning of the semester. This was for high school but a similar, albeit possibly shortened for young ones to stay focused on.
Modelling the values students mention in the WOW starts with classroom teachers. Here are some of the ways I interact with students to make them feel at ease in my classroom. I teach French and Social Studies so there is a lot of room for students to feel out of place, unprepared, ill equipped, not smart enough. My goal is to meet them where they are, even if they should have read the chapter last night and so ‘should know’ the answer to a question.
If they don’t have the answer I ask them to share what they think they know about the question (this could also be the next sentence if we are reading aloud in French). “Give us what you’ve got” I will say. I bracket this with a comment that anything the student has will help us all to learn more about the topic or how to say something in French. This way students feel they have something valuable to contribute and it’s not all just to make an unprepared student feel better, it’s to show the student and the class that there is a kind way to walk along someone in class.
What about when students give the wrong answer? Here is a great opportunity for classroom teachers to meet a student where they are, without making them feel little, and in fact recognizing the courage it took to contribute to the class. I often will thank students for asking the question, for take the learning risk to ask it. I have seen this encourage students not just work harder, ask more questions, but ask questions and make comments that propelled learning because they knew it was safe to ask. I’ve also seen this help when students have intentionally tried to derail a class discussion or ask something inappropriate. Even in this last scenario, I thanked them for the question or comment, mentioning that may have taken courage to ask a risky question or make a risky comment. I gently correct “That’s not a term that is used today because we understand the negative connotations attached to it and the hurt it causes.”
Another tool I use for creating community and helping students to feel comfortable and encourage them to take learning risks is feedback. There will be a post in the near future will cover feedback specifics. How do I use feedback and does it take a long time? Legit questions because when you have 120 students a day, it takes a fair amount of time to give the sort of feedback that creates community…fiction! You certainly can give encouragement and let students know the areas of growth they can work on in a few sentences but still be meaningful and authentic. Focus on parts of the assignment (formative or summative) not on the teacher (“I like that you included symbols”. Be specific, make sure the student knows what you mean with your comment – “This assignment highlighted the correct use of conjunctions” and not ambiguous comments like “Great job!”