I recently saw a quote on Instagram by Dr. Justin Tarte: “As educators, the more we know about who we teach, the more effective we will be with what we teach. Taking time to get to know our students isn’t fluff time, it’s academic time.”
What are you doing to get to know your students? Will students write to you in a journal each week? Have you given your students an interest inventory? What kinds of activities have you planned to help the class get to know each other? A few ideas:
Journal Entry Prompts – For one of their first journal entries, put the following prompts on the board:
- “I want you to know…”
- “I am most proud of…”
- “My favourite thing to do is…”
- “I am worried about…”
Students can choose one prompt or more than one. By giving this choice, most students will connect to at least one option and be motivated to write. To help build relationships with your students, write a sentence or two back each week. And remember, do not ‘correct’ or ‘mark up’ your students’ journals. Focus on content and building connections.
Guess Who? – Early on in the school year, ask students to write one factual statement about themselves. It could be anything. Something they enjoy doing. Number of siblings. Type of pet and the pet’s name. Anything! Write something yourself, too. Then, collect all of the sentences. Randomly pull one and read it to the class. The class has to ‘guess who’ wrote it. (Be sure to read everyone’s sentence even if it’s not all at once.)
If you have favourite ideas to get to know your students, please share them here!
I did this with my grade 4’s last year. I would give them a prompt, but encouraged them to tell me anything they wanted to tell me. The prompt was there for anybody who didn’t know what they wanted to tell me.
I agree. Open-ended is fine for some. Others need those prompts!
Wonderful ideas, Thank you for sharing!
I teach grade 1. Most kids can not write yet, so we use our carpet time to sing, “Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?” so we learn each other’s names. Later, they make an ‘All about me’ poster by drawing pictures and labelling or writing about each picture (if they can), and they present it in class.
Such great ideas! Thanks for sharing.