Getting to Know Students as Learners
A benefit of getting to know students as learners is to determine students' readiness for learning. Each student comes to the classroom with a different learning experience that is influenced by their previous learning successes or failures, as well as self-esteem, cultural norms, and work habits.
Strategies:
Strategies:
- Creating learning profiles for students
- Multiple intelligence surveys
- Incorporating different learning styles into lessons
- Academic performance tracking (exit tickets)
- Small groups
Getting to Know Students as Individuals
Building positive relationships with students takes time and effort. As you get to know your students, you realize there are many personalities in one classroom. Getting to know students as individuals will make it easier to group students and predict how personalities will interact in the classroom. Students who have strong student-teacher interactions were more likely to take on challenges and work longer on hard tasks (Jones & Kahn, 2017).
Strategies:
Strategies:
- Frame Game- pass a frame around and say your name and something you like or a question everyday for the first week of school.
- Self-Portrait- have students draw a picture of themselves and explain things or write a sentence about themselves.
- Ice-Breakers- Provide students with a way to explore around the room to meet other classmates by saying their name then asking them a question/stating what they like about the other person.
- Bingo- Bingo card with items and if they have the item or pets they put a marker on that box until someone gets bingo.
- Show and tell- students bring their favorite objects from home to share with the class.
- All about me writing activity
Our Plan:
Our next steps include incorporating strategies and activities to get to know students both academically and personally into our classroom. We will embed these social and emotional topics into our curriculum and also make time for quick activities. In our planning of the implementation we will provide opportunities for the teacher to get to know the student individually, as a class and with classmates.
Janeth will: incorporate getting to know you prompts as part of bellwork for her middle school students. Students will be able to share with the whole class and Janeth will still get to know students who do not share by reading their bellwork at the end of the week. Examples of prompts include: "Marvelous Monday: pick a peer and write about what makes them marvelous" and "Top of the List Tuesday: Write a list of 3 things that make you happy."
Irene will: incorporate star student of the week on Monday by sending home a poster that the student gets to work on at home with their parents. I will pick a student on Wednesday so that gives them enough time to work on their poster at home. They will come into school on Monday and present their poster to the class. This is a great way for students to get to know one another. I will be extending this activity with incorporating show and tell for the star student on Friday. This student will get the chance to bring an item into school on Friday that they love and share it with the class. I will ask them an array of questions about the item and the final question will be how does this item make you feel?
Justi will: try “show and tell”. It’s planned to be implemented Monday, Thursday, and Friday. The goal in implementing show and tell in the classroom is to have students share what’s special to them and for students and teachers to get to know the student better through it. It’s also great for students to connect with other students if they have the same object and practice asking who, what, where, when, and why questions.
Giselle will: incorporate daily emotional check-ins with kindergarten students in my student teaching classroom. I created a sheet that has five different emotions: happy, silly, worried, sad, and mad. The students have to color in the emotion that represents how they are feeling in that moment during the school day. Once the students complete their check in, I review them and check in with those students that have a concerning emotions.
Together we will: conduct a student survey of classroom environment before and after implementing our strategies for getting to know students. We will gather data and compare results to decide our next steps.
Janeth will: incorporate getting to know you prompts as part of bellwork for her middle school students. Students will be able to share with the whole class and Janeth will still get to know students who do not share by reading their bellwork at the end of the week. Examples of prompts include: "Marvelous Monday: pick a peer and write about what makes them marvelous" and "Top of the List Tuesday: Write a list of 3 things that make you happy."
Irene will: incorporate star student of the week on Monday by sending home a poster that the student gets to work on at home with their parents. I will pick a student on Wednesday so that gives them enough time to work on their poster at home. They will come into school on Monday and present their poster to the class. This is a great way for students to get to know one another. I will be extending this activity with incorporating show and tell for the star student on Friday. This student will get the chance to bring an item into school on Friday that they love and share it with the class. I will ask them an array of questions about the item and the final question will be how does this item make you feel?
Justi will: try “show and tell”. It’s planned to be implemented Monday, Thursday, and Friday. The goal in implementing show and tell in the classroom is to have students share what’s special to them and for students and teachers to get to know the student better through it. It’s also great for students to connect with other students if they have the same object and practice asking who, what, where, when, and why questions.
Giselle will: incorporate daily emotional check-ins with kindergarten students in my student teaching classroom. I created a sheet that has five different emotions: happy, silly, worried, sad, and mad. The students have to color in the emotion that represents how they are feeling in that moment during the school day. Once the students complete their check in, I review them and check in with those students that have a concerning emotions.
Together we will: conduct a student survey of classroom environment before and after implementing our strategies for getting to know students. We will gather data and compare results to decide our next steps.