Community building often happens in the first few days of the semester, but after attending a faculty development session last week, it became clear to me, that I need to continue to build the course\u2019s community over the entire semester.\u00a0 This workshop provided me with a few take-aways to help with sustaining my course\u2019s community.<\/p>\n
One Word<\/strong><\/p>\n At the beginning of class, have the students go around the room (including yourself) and say one word that represents how they\u2019re feeling.\u00a0 This is a great strategy to check in with the students about their feelings for being in class at that moment.\u00a0 This strategy can also be used to check in with students about the content or an assignment.\u00a0 Another way to use this strategy is to have the students rate how they are feeling on a scale that you provide.\u00a0 At the end of class, you could also repeat the activity.\u00a0 This provides one more opportunity to check in with the student, and it also allows every student to share.<\/p>\n Wash over questions<\/strong><\/p>\n As the students are working on an in-class assignment or in groups, write down questions they\u2019re asking each other in their groups.\u00a0 Before you read the questions, tell the students that they are to just listen and let the questions \u201cwash over\u201d them as they\u2019re read aloud.\u00a0 This allows the students to hear ideas that were shared and possibly explored in their groups.\u00a0 You could also switch up this strategy by writing down statements or observations you heard and then share those.\u00a0 When you read these questions, statements, or observations, you\u2019re providing all of your students with a voice, and you\u2019re allowing them to hear each other\u2019s thoughts, ideas, and insights.<\/p>\n Gratitude Exit Slip<\/strong><\/p>\n The final community sustaining activity that I learned about is called gratitude exit slip.\u00a0 The purpose of this activity is to allow students to share their gratitude for each other.\u00a0 Give each student a notecard.\u00a0 On the notecard, they are to write and share who they are grateful for in class and why.\u00a0 The notecard is a way for students to describe a time when someone in their course helped during the lesson or class day.\u00a0 The students hand in the notecards to you as they leave the class.\u00a0 You\u2019ll get a sense of who helps in class and you\u2019ll provide opportunities for reflection.\u00a0\u00a0 To help sustain the community even more, you could email the entire list of gratitude out to the class so they can see all of the good happening.<\/p>\n Let me know if you try any of the strategies and how they work for you and your course.\u00a0 Feel free to comment below if you have any additional community sustaining activities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Community building often happens in the first few days of the semester, but after attending a faculty development session last week, it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teaching-tips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5DI6r-rA","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1710"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1713,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1710\/revisions\/1713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.principia.edu\/teaching-excellence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}