In previous lessons in this series I discussed the essence of classroom community building. Building and maintaining a strong classroom community is an important aspect of the elementary school teacher's job. This does not translate to a teacher-centered environment whereas students are tightly regulated and operate under a reward-consequence system of government. In this type of classroom children only learn that getting along is the object to avoid punishment and gain reward.
Instead, every teacher needs to use character education activities regularly to instill a natural sense of community built on real love, respect, friendship, teamwork, honesty, and support of fellow peers. I started my year
with friendship at the center of our character curriculum. I continued the year in October by presenting various themes to children and having them choose which they thought would be a good theme for October. The majority vote was for "teamwork and cooperation." I told the children that we should acknowledge the feelings of those children whose choice of theme was not selected. However, teamwork and cooperation was a great choice because in a student-centered environment teamwork and cooperation are extremely important.
The first activity I chose to do was silent conversations. This was a great activity because it blended science, writing, and cooperative learning practice. At the beginning of the lesson I referred to conversations and share times we had had as a whole group related to our science study on ecosystems. I reminded them of all the things we got to see and do at our trip to the nature preserve and then announced that they were going to be paired with another student in the class and that their job was to have a "silent conversation." I told them that each pair was going to have a loose leaf piece of paper and that the topic of their conversations was going to be "The trip to the environmental center." The rule was that they could not talk with one another, but that they had to exchange dialogue by passing the paper between them and writing their comments down on the paper.
I put them in their pairs, started a timer for ten minutes, and told them to converse. For the next ten minutes the children wrote back and forth to one another about their trip....what they saw, how they liked the trip, and what they learned. I later saved their written conversations in their portfolio and I inquired (in the whole group) about the importance of each person's role in the conversation by asking questions like "What if one of you in the pair didn't respond during the task?" "Did anyone have difficulty in the task?"
The activity
is great because it allows the teacher to integrate. The conversations topic can be anything, which means it can be connected to any curriculum area. Repeat the acitivity several times through the year and see how the mechanics of the activity improve as they become more and more familiar with it.