Creating a classroom community is about creating an environment where students and teachers work and play together to meet a common goal. A strong community requires more than your beginning-of-the-year activities. Implement these three strategies today to build a stronger community in your classroom.

Creating Classroom Community with Community Meetings

A simple but effective way to build classroom community is to hold meetings with your class weekly. These meetings don’t need to be long. Classroom meetings can review expectations, set goals, or do a simple check-in.

Students crave the opportunity to be heard. Use your classroom meetings for students to share a highlight of the week or something they want to improve next week.

The content of the meetings will depend on the age group of the students. Students look forward to upcoming classroom community meetings.

Classroom meetings and group goals give students ownership of the classroom environment. Ownership helps students become more engaged in the classroom environment and gives students more respect for one another and your expectations. Check out The Mind Trek Programs for resources you can use in your community meetings.

Give Daily Shout-Outs or Compliments

A simple and quick way to build community in the classroom is to create a shout-out or compliment ritual. When students hear that they are doing well, they are likelier to continue trying.

Teachers can organize a compliment circle regularly, in which each student gives another a compliment. This is an opportunity for students to hear the good things they are doing from one another. A variation on this activity would be for students to fill out a compliment slip giving another student in the class a compliment. Take the slips and add a compliment for any student that did not receive one. The slips can be read aloud by you or other classmates or handed out to the owner.

Teachers choose to give a shout-out to one student at the end of each class. Shout-outs can go to students that have been working really hard, following classroom expectations, or students that need a boost. This routine points out and reinforces positive behavior in the classroom, encourages students to follow expectations, and boosts student morale.

Shout-out rituals take nearly no time but allow students to recognize one another for good work. Teachers have the opportunity to showcase positive examples for the rest of the class as well.

A compliment truly can make someone’s day!

Give Students a Voice

A fun and interactive strategy for creating a classroom community is to give students a voice. Teachers can do this through comment cards, weekly notes to the teacher, or classroom forums.

You might pass out a prompt like, “One thing I wish my teacher knew…” with blank lines for students to fill out the rest. Students then have a chance to share with their teacher, and teachers have the opportunity to learn more about their students.

A fun get-to-know-your-class activity is a fact-guessing game. Students will write facts about themselves on note cards. You should then shuffle the cards and pass them around. Students can read them out loud, and the class can work together to guess who the card is about. Alternatively, students can race to find the owner of the card they are holding.

Games are a great way to get students engaged and working together. Carefully selected games will help students get to know one another and build your classroom community. Students will enjoy the social time, and your classroom community will increase even if you can only do an activity occasionally.

SEL Unfiltered

Do you want to hear more? Check out the rest of our series on Career Readiness on our SEL Unfiltered podcast, wherever you stream your podcasts.

Check out other episodes in our Classroom Community series, including What is classroom community? The Benefits of Classroom Community, and How to Create Classroom Community Virtually.

Game of the Week

Every week on SEL Unfiltered, we like to bring you a game or activity. You can use the game with your students, in the classroom, or in a small group. This week Kaitlin and I played If You Really Knew Me.

If You Really Knew Me is an excellent way to get to know your students and for your students to get to know one another. Have students stand in a circle around the room. The first student would begin by saying, “If you really knew me, you would know that,” and then they would finish the sentence. The students would each take a turn finishing the prompt.

If You Really Knew Me could be more challenging by repeating the previous responses. For example, Beth said that she is afraid of spiders, Tommy stated that he loves skateboarding, and Alex said that his favorite food is pizza. Samantha goes; next, she would say, “If you really knew me, you would know that I don’t like loud noises, Beth is afraid of spiders, Tommy skateboards, and Alex’s favorite food is pizza. Each student shares their personal statement and then repeats those that went before them.

If You Really Knew Me could also be used as a question prompt for a journal entry, a check-in, or an exit prompt.