Connecting Kids

Welcome to the 2015-2016 school year! In order to build a foundation for a great school year, the first week of school at Goodrich is all about getting students comfortable in their new classroom and making it a place that they are excited to come to each day. Students are more likely to achieve their full potential in an environment where they feel comfortable and secure. 

In order to create this type of learning environment, we spend much of the first week doing activities that allow us to share about ourselves and learn about others in our class. While doing these activities students begin getting to know each other and building connections by the things that they have in common.

An activity that we did today in third grade is a Kagan Cooperative Learning class building activity called “People Hunt”. To begin, each student filled out a column on a page naming some of their favorite things or things that describe them. Then, students began mixing around the room to have conversations with other classmates to find something that they have in common. When a student was able to find a similarity with a classmate, the classmate’s name went in the second column on their paper. 

I love seeing how this activity promotes positive student interaction because all students get to share about themselves, while having a feeling that their classmates care about what they have to say. We will keep this page in our folder and use our similarity partners for different activities throughout the year. 

I look forward to continuing getting to know the students and I’m sure we will all have a great year!