Making a class version of a book is a community building activity used by lots of teachers at the beginning of the year. I used it with second graders, but it could definitely be adapted for younger or older students. Here’s how it works:
When Bristol Elementary School, a public school in a small Vermont town, started its journey of Responsive Classroom implementation a few years ago, it took a two-pronged approach, focusing simultaneously on classroom practices and a few high-impact schoolwide initiatives. In both areas, the contributions of educational assistants and other support staff have been a key to success.
Last year's class, my twenty-third, was the most challenging of my teaching career. Most of the students were quite young for fifth grade, and several had a history of severe behavior problems. The result was a classroom like a popcorn popper—one student's outburst would set off a flurry of others. A schedule that kept us in the classroom for three-and-a-half hours straight before lunch only made things worse.
"Matthew! Get away. You're not sitting with us!" Libby hissed the words, her voice oozing with contempt as she stuck her leg out to keep Matthew from joining the small group gathered for silent reading.
I whipped around. The vehemence in Libby's voice shocked me. Libby generally treated her classmates with kindness and seldom spoke sharply to anyone.
“We used to have pictures like these going back for years,” says Peter Harrison, principal of Young School, indicating a pair of large framed photos by the school’s entrance. Each picture shows about 300 children and forty adults gathered outside the compact modular building that now houses this K–2 school.
For many families at Sarasota Suncoast Academy, the school day begins in the parking lot with a friendly personal welcome from principal Steve Crump. He and the rest of the office staff are there twice every day, at arrival and dismissal time, greeting each child by name and touching base with parents dropping their children off at school. “For the parents, just seeing us out there sends a message,” says Steve. This routine is just one of many ways the Suncoast staff demonstrates to families their school’s focus on both social and academic learning.
When test scores indicated that students at the Lawrence Barnes School needed more work on vocabulary and reading comprehension, staff at the K–5 school devised a way to build skills and community at the same time. In the fall of 2005, Mary Weith and others from Barnes’s special education services team launched a schoolwide Word of the Week program, which gave every child many chances to hear, read, and use a particularly juicy vocabulary word over the course of a week.
At a time when many policy makers are concerned primarily with children's cognitive development and how they do on standardized tests, educators from around the country gathered in Amherst, Massachusetts, to reaffirm the importance of educating the whole child and to share effective ways to do so. The two-day conference, the first of its kind organized by NEFC, focused on using the Responsive Classroom approach schoolwide as a way to promote children's academic, social, and emotional growth.
“You can see our school from the bridge,” a fifth grader proudly points out about the recently renovated Regional Multicultural Magnet School (RMMS). Built into a hill overlooking the New London waterfront, RMMS is indeed visible from the bridge that spans the harbor below. The handsome building combines a historic stone structure with a dramatic brick and glass addition. The result is a permanent home for this vibrant K–5 school, which draws students from twelve districts in southeastern Connecticut.
On a winter afternoon, a group of third graders has settled down for a class discussion. Their teacher, Nancy Kovacic, holds the book the children made last fall—pictures and words embodying their social and academic aspirations for the year. "Who remembers," she asks, "way back to September when we wrote about our Hopes and Goals?" Eight hands shoot up.
When each school in her district was required to convene a literacy team, Karen Casto, then principal of Penn Valley Elementary School, saw it as an opportunity for the whole school to learn together about reading. So, rather than selecting just a few individuals to be on the team, she asked all classroom teachers to participate.
What are your goals in sharing knowledge about child development with students’ families, and how do you go about it?
Joey, a second grader, returns from a doctor's appointment in the middle of a math lesson. "Welcome back, Joey," his teacher says with a smile. "We're working together to solve the problem on page twenty-three."
I know that it's important to have a good working relationship with the parents and care-takers of the children in my classroom. The children come from diverse backgrounds, with differences in ethnicity, religion, socio-economic status, and family structure. What can I do to reach out to families in a way that's welcoming and respectful of all?
