Why Encourage Team Building in the Elementary Classroom?

Why should we encourage Teamwork in the Elementary Classroom? 

I've encouraged children to work as a team in my classroom for many years. Although they're not necessarily going to score better on those high-stakes tests, working as a team helps children develop many important skills!

 

Here are some of the skills children learn from team-building activities:

• communication
• collaboration
• listening
• time management
• problem-solving
• putting others first
• conflict management

 
Interesting, some might say these are "life skills!" Yes, these are skills that children need to develop to be successful in life, which I feel is far more important than being successful on tests!

 

These are some activities to encourage teamwork in the classroom:

• morning meeting activities
• shared stories
  
• project-based learning
• STEM or STEAM projects
• put on a class play
• relay races
• team trivia
  
• partner work
  
• plan a class party
• scavenger hunts 
• educational games, played as teams

I'm sure you can think of plenty more, including activities connected to your curriculum! Make sure to mention that the goal is to "work as a team," and "look out for the others!"

 

Most important, motivate them to encourage others! Make sure these words are used often! 

• Good job!
• You can do it!
• Awesome job!
• You are incredible!
• You figured it out!
• You're on the right track!
• You make it look easy!
• That's the way!
• You've got this! 
• I can see you're really trying!

Here's an idea: let them make a list of more encouraging words, and display them for children to use as a reference. Be sure to model using encouraging words for your whole class team!

Here are some helpful resources:

• Back to School Team Building, Ice Breakers, and Get to Know You Activities
• 60 Team Building Games and Activities to Build Classroom Community

Here are some links for more information about Team Building in the classroom:

• Team Building, Ice Breakers, and Get to Know You Activities
  
• Dramatics in the Classroom
  
• Space Balls
  
• Six Ways to Integrate Team Building Into Your Curriculum
  
• Paper Bag Dramatics
  
• Be Prepared for Giggles
  
• Pass the Clap - a Fun Game!
• 25 Alternatives to Handshakes
  
• The Bulgaria Game
  
• Building Social Skills AND Academics with Morning Meeting
  
• Five Team Building Activities for Back to School
  
• Team Building Activities 
• Partner Standing Challenge
  

Team Building, Ice Breakers, and Get to Know You Activities

To teach children, we need to build relationships with them. 

To work comfortably with each other, they need to build relationships with each other. 

So how can we build relationships?

Whether school is starting soon, or not for a while, these things are important:

• Building bonds of trust with your students.
• Helping students build bonds with each other.
• Get to know the student's academic abilities,
• Help the children get to know your expectations and procedures. 

This post suggests some team-building and getting-to-know-you activities. These activities will also help you get to know your students while showing your expectations as well!

 

Here's one way to get them comfortable with you and with

each other:

Morning Meetings are a great way to start the day! I like to start with some sort of greeting. These Morning Meeting Greeting Activities come with a fun question for every single day, a nice picture and the same writing prompt.

This "Get to Know You" Game is a perfect way to begin reading groups, centers, or just have fun. The cards can be shared at morning meeting, or used with the included Board Game.

 

This resource has a collection of games and activities for building classroom community. These are perfect for morning meetings!  60 Team Building Games and Activities to Build Classroom Community
 

Looking to save some money (and time) on a bundle? Try this one:

Back to School Team Builders, Ice Breakers, and Get to Know You Activities! This collection has everything you'll need to get to know your students and get them feeling comfortable with each other! Once you've got them feeling safe and comfortable with each other, then the REAL learning can begin!

I'm sure you'll find ways to build relationships with your students. 

What's your plan?

Back to School Success Strategies Part 2: Build Relationships

It's getting closer to that time again. 

No matter where you are in your summer vacation, getting back is in your future. This series of posts is designed to make that return a bit smoother for you. 

Today is Part 2 in a five-part series about returning to school successfully.

Build Relationships

As teachers, we all know that building relationships is as important as the teaching itself! After all, if they don't know you care, they won't learn from you!

Morning Meetings are a great way to build relationships with students, and help them build relationships with each other! Interesting topics of discussion are great for getting them to develop oral language as well as building those bonds. 

It's also a good idea to find times to connect on a more personal level. It can be a challenge to find one-on-one time with them, but it's worth the effort! If the children are old enough, it's fun to let them write in a journal, which they'll pass in. They love when you write back a personal note! This can be build into the morning routine, or perhaps a part of writing or literacy time.

Here are some resources and ideas to help build relationships and connections: 

These games can be easily used in the classroom, and are perfect for Morning Meeting! Plus, many of these games can be adapted to topics of learning! 60 Team Building Games and Activities

If you're not familiar with Boom Cards, it's time you hopped on this bandwagon! Why? They can be used on any device, since all you need to do is send a link. You can send the link through any platform! 

This set of Boom Cards lets the children answer questions about themselves, helping them get to know themselves a little better, and helping the teacher get to know them as well! (Don't tell them it's a great way to practice reading and writing skills, and the teacher can easily make assessments of their writing skills!) 

These can be done through distance learning, or in the classroom. It might be fun to bring this resource back a few times a year in order to see the growth and change the children are experiencing: Who Am I: Get to Know Your Students Boom Cards

This game is amazingly popular, and really helps build relationships! The cards themselves make great questions for discussion, during Morning Meeting, or reading discussions! Get to Know You Board Game

I'm sure you have more ways to build relationships with students than I've listed here. Feel free to share your ideas in the comments below!

Be sure to read the other four parts of these Back to School Success Strategies!

I imagine you're thinking of more strategies for building relationships!

 I hope you'll share some of these in the comments below.

 

The Bulgaria Game: A Team Building Game for Imaginative Children

 Brain research tells us that getting students engaged physically will help learning happen!

This game is a great "filler" that will get the kiddos thinking about communication without words.

The game's title only works well if you don't have anyone in your group that speaks Bulgarian. If you do have someone who speaks Bulgarian, you'll have to change the name of the game to some language that no one knows, since the game depends on broken lines of communication.

Here's the scenario: you happen to be traveling through Bulgaria. You need something, so you pull over into a convenience store.

Unfortunately, the people working in the store only speak Bulgarian, which you don't speak. 

Therefore, you have to "act out" what you'll need!

There are a couple of ways to proceed once they know the story:

1. Let individuals think of things to act out.

2. Let groups think of things to act out.

3. Have slips written up with things to act out.

Of course, #3 can be done with individuals or teams.

If you go with #3, you can find ways to use content vocabulary and make it count as academic! 

Yes, it's not very likely that they'll have to pull into a convenience store in Bulgaria for landforms or geometric shapes, but they are usually having so much fun acting out vocabulary words, they don't mind!

 A word of caution: some children are VERY competitive, and try to make it difficult for others to guess their word. Or, they're disappointed if their audience figures it out right away. 

I have to remind them that the goal of the game is to communicate enough information so that their audience understands what they're acting out. If the audience gets it right away, they have communicated successfully!

I know, it's kind of a silly scenario just to get children to act things out, but it's a fun story, and the children enjoy it!

Looking for more team-building games? Try these: 

60 Team Building Games and Activities to Promote Classroom Community

After all, if it motivates the students to engage, it's successful!

Six Ways to Integrate Team Building into Your Curriculum

Of course, I have always wanted my students to be successful in their school experiences. But I've always wanted more than that. 

I've wanted my students to be successful in life!

I recently did a search for skills needed for success in life. Most of the skills mentioned in each article overlapped. These are the ones that came up most often:

There is so much we must teach in our classrooms these days. 

How could we possibly squeeze in these important skills as well?

It just so happens in my studies of brain research, I've been focused on numerous team-building activities, and I've got some ideas on how we can squeeze these activities into our curriculum. (After all, brain research tells us that FUN is an element that helps a brain remember things!)

Countdown is a game the kiddos love, and there are many ways to tie some curriculum into the game! You can find a "Dollar Deal" download of this game here: How to Play Countdown. In "Countdown," all you need is a sequence. In second grade, I often play the game with skip counting, since that's something they need to hear and practice over and over. Other ideas for a sequence could be: seasons, multiplication facts, states of matter, types of communities, types of rock formations, names of presidents, or countries in Europe. 

Speed Chatting is a Team Building activity that gives the children a chance to talk... a LOT! All you have to do to include an area of the curriculum is to give them a topic to discuss! It might be: books you've read, facts about weather, interesting words you know, a country in South America, or whatever you happen to be studying at the time! Plus, talking about what they're learning enhances the learning! You can see more about this activity here: Speed Chatting.

Paper Bag Dramatics is another fun Team Building activity. It involves creating skits with the props in a bag. This can easily be connected to the curriculum by putting things in each bag that are connected to an area of the curriculum. If you're studying the 5 senses, you can put things (or pictures, or word cards) that can be smelled or tasted. If you're studying plants, you can put some plant types (or pictures, or word cards) that show the parts of plants. Get it? You can find more about paper bag dramatics here: Paper Bag Dramatics.

Pass the Clap is a favorite for the kiddos! Now I'm having a hard time trying to think of a way to include curriculum ideas for this one, since it really doesn't include verbal communication. However, if you look at the list of important skills above, we've got #2 and #8 covered! If you can think of a way to include curriculum with this one, please leave it in the comments below. But in the meantime, squeeze this one in somewhere, since these are important skills. (It only takes a couple of minutes, and it's a great warm-up activity during Morning Meeting!) To read more about this game, see here: Pass the Clap.

High-Low is an activity I always play with students at the end of the day. However, it doesn't have to be at the end of the day. It could be at the end of a certain subject in school. The children could discuss the high and low of their math lesson, the book they're reading, a science experiment, a country they've been studying, and so on. As we know, talking about a lesson reinforces learning. Plus, they LOVE to talk about themselves! To learn more about this activity see here: High-Low.

Party Talk is super fun and a great culmination activity! I was introduced to this when I was taking my master's program in Creative Arts in Learning. In my Music Integration class, we were to do research on a composer. I chose to research Steven Sondheim, who composes a lot of music for the theatre. (Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, Follies, Company, etc.) Instead of having us get up and just talk about our composer, the instructor gave us "Hello My Name is" badges and we had a "cocktail party." We went around, with our (non-alcoholic) drinks, and introduced ourselves, and talked about our lives. It was so much fun! Many years later, I was teaching 5th grade Social Studies. The children were researching famous people in the Revolutionary War era. Of course, I couldn't have a "cocktail party" with 5th graders, but we could have a "Boston Tea Party!" In this case, the kids were drinking tea, not dumping tea into the harbor. Again, we made "Hello My Name is" badges, served tea and "crumpets" and we had ourselves a tea party! Many of the kids even dressed up in colonial style! I'm sure you can think of many other ways of having a "Party Talk."

Still looking for ideas to squeeze these important into your day? 

Be sure to check out this resource: 60 Team Building Games and Activities.