3 easy ways to build relationships- Part 1
We’ve all been there or heard it. You have an issue with a student and the first thing someone suggests is for you to work on your relationship with them. This can be so frustrating in a moment when you are struggling with a student or a class and relationship building is not the only thing that affects how a child acts or succeeds in your classroom. However, it is one thing you can control or influence. So usually the people asking you to work on your relationships with your students have their heart in the right place, even if it isn’t what you want to hear in the moment. One of the reasons this can be so frustrating when given advice is that what your told what to do without being give examples of how to do it. Or the examples are heavy asks on the teacher. So here are three easy ways to build relationships in your classroom.
The first way is something that teachers can do outside of the classroom that has a huge impact with in it. Send home positive postcards. Positive postcards are a great way to build relationships with students. You can write 1 or two lines on a postcard that showcase what you admire or want to highlight about the student and it works for any student, especially the one’s who struggle the most. Many schools and districts will even help with purchasing supplies by providing the postcards, and stamps. You can also ask your building secretaries to show you how to print out mailing labels so you don’t have to write each individual student’s address or worry about writing it incorrectly.
These positive postcards are great because 1) students rarely get real life mail sent to them and the idea of getting mail is always exciting and 2) it allows you to connect with each and every student individually and quickly highlight their strengths so that they feel seen and cared about.
Tips and Tricks: With over 170 students that I teach I like to try to write to 1 class a day for a week to get the postcards completed in a reasonable time. I pick a week that I have a lighter load so that I can use my plan time to do this. I also like thinking about a few key phrases and ideas I want to highlight students on so that I can adjust slightly for each kiddo to personalize it, but without trying to think up 170+ different things to write.
The Second Way I build relationships with students is using warm ups as a place to practice skills with fun questions. Often times warm ups are a great place to practice skills like critical thinking, or problem solving, or even answering questions using evidence. This is a great way to not only have students gain more mastery of a certain skill by practicing it with something fun, but it is also a great way to promote relationship buidling with you and each other. Asking them to build something out of construction paper in 5 minutes, or do a human knot, or answer the question “If animals had elections what animal would be elected president of the ocean and why?” or “do you think punishments and rewards work when trying to get students to complete their homework on time” can help students learn information about each other and you and vise versa through their play and answers. Play is also something that is transformative in a classroom. We all feel better about going to school or work when we have something to look forward to and bringing play into the classroom 1-2x a week is a great way to help you and your students feel joyful together as well as practice skills like communication and collaboration. There are tons of games you can play quickly in under 5 minutes and that can be connected to content or not. For the Team building Tasks I do check out it out in my resources here!
Tips and Tricks: Have 2-3 different types of warm ups you rotate through either throughout the year (1 per quarter) or throughout the week so that things don’t get stale. This is also helpful to allow you to use the same warm ups in different subject or grade levels if you teach secondary or at any grade level to create/plan warm ups that are easy to implement and plan or change on the spot ahead of time. This will save you time and as a bonus gives students a strong classroom structure which will also help mitigate classroom management issues. When students have an idea of what to expect each class, but there is a little element of variety they feel safer and are more prepped to learn.
For a huge resource of how to organize your classroom so your plan can be your plan, how to help you and students thrive in classroom mangement, lots of activities you can adjust for your grade level or content area sign up for the Ultimate Classroom Transformation here!
