RUNNING HEAD: CLASSROOM BUILDING ACTIVITIES AND REFLECTIONS

Constance Reid

Classroom Building Activities and Reflections

Old Dominion University

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Where I’m From – Found originally in Classroom Building Exercises and practiced through

personal experience (the link in the folder was either deleted or corrupted)

I came into contact with this activity personally during my senior year English class (R.

Moak, personal communication). Since I plan to teach high school English and have seen this

icebreaker tool in use, this is something I know would be appropriate. In the activity, the students

will write a poem or a ballad about their life and what has brought them to the present. Examples

of what students can incorporate in this activity include references to their most vivid childhood

memories, characteristics of their home/hometown, culture references that may be different from

the majority in the class/school, credit to who raised them, etc. This gives the student a prime

opportunity to be as personal as they would like to be with the teacher. It also gives students who

feel under represented the opportunity to share what they feel sets them apart from the rest.

Milner, Cunningham, Delale-OConnor, & Kestenberg (2019) offer:

“… teachers are attempting to co-develop learning communities populated with students

whom they perceive in fragmented, disconnected, and incomplete ways. In other words,

teachers are not seeing the whole humanity or lived experiences of their students when

they adopt color-blind orientations to their practice” (p. 20).”

This assignment holds the potential to offer the teacher a stronger understanding for behaviors

that may occur in the future, reasons for absences, etc. due to cultural differences in religion,

family structure, socioeconomic status, etc.

I would give this activity to students and give them a couple of days to work on it before

they turn it in to me. When I was tasked with this assignment, our only parameter was a three-

page cutoff. I would leave the same parameter. I feel as though giving them this amount of free

reign would aid in my gauging of where they are in terms of their knowledge of poetry, their
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fluidity of prose, etc. I would follow in the footsteps of my teacher and give them an appropriate

but true example of mine to share the vulnerability they will potentially share with me. Though

there was nothing out of the ordinary or inappropriate in her example, it was evident that

students felt an immediate sense of trust with this teacher. This is what I hope to attain when I

give my students this icebreaking assignment.

Classroom Constitution – Found in Classroom Building Exercises

This activity stuck out to me because of the similarity how my Classroom Management

and Discipline course (J. Beck, personal communication) established our classroom norms. I

would assign this activity during the first week of class so the students would have an

understanding and set standards in which to hold themselves accountable. This can be beneficial

to all age groups, and while it may seem a little elementary, I believe that for the older students it

has potential to encourage collaborative agreement, teaches the lesson of compromise, and shows

the students that I think of them as reasonable humans versus kids who need guided. The article

from Teaching Tolerance (n.d.) which introduces this activity tells us “When students build and

agree on their rights and responsibilities as members of a classroom community, they are much

more likely to abide by those rules and to keep one another in check, experts say.” No matter the

grade level, giving them a ‘constitution’ and not going over what would happen if a rule was

broken would seem a little unfair. The aim of this constitution coupled with a clear disciplinary

action that would follow if a rule was broken is establishes a sense of transparency in the

classroom.

I plan for this activity to bring students a sense of responsibility and accountability. Every

day, similar to how we operate in classroom management and discipline, I will refer to our

‘classroom constitution’ and note if any rules will vary; perhaps students will be encouraged to
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use their technology that day where they are otherwise told ‘silent and away.’ If a rule on the

constitution is broken, I would want to reference the pre-discussed disciplinary actions so it will

come as no surprise to the student. Appropriate transparency is something I hope I am able to

easily obtain with my classes off the bat. The only measurable way to observe if this works for

the class is to note the amount of times the rules are broken or the amount of times the students

try to twist the rules to better fit their situation.

Knock-Knock Joke Transition – Found in Classroom Building Exercises

Throughout grade school, teachers used various methods of reigning in the class from a

think-pair-share activity, small group discussion, or just disruptive classroom behavior. Some

common methods I experienced in grade school were call backs, finishing a specific sentence,

and mirroring claps. I read about one in the Classroom Building Exercise folder that brought

some humor into the classroom by bringing the class back with a knock-knock joke or a brief

joke that will grab their attention. I feel like with high schoolers, clap backs and finishing

sentences can become a little elementary. This will give the students a change up from what they

normally come into contact with when it comes to transitions or segues for school activities. It

will also provide a sense of comic relief, no matter how corny the joke may be.

I can measure if this strategy is effective by the students reaction to how I plan to

introduce the joke coupled with their reaction after the punchline is delivered. For younger

students (and perhaps older), this may stray them down a path of distracted discussion. The

reaction would be something I’d be able to observe pretty early on and be able to adjust

accordingly to meet the need of getting the students’ attention back on the lesson. I just believe

that implementing something more playful like this would offer a relief to the student to know
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that the divide between work and play in my classroom isn’t as black and white as it may be in

other classes they have.

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References:

Milner, H. R., Cunningham, H. B., Delale-OConnor, L., & Kestenberg, E. G. (2019). “These

kids are out on control”: Why we must reimagine “classroom management” for equity.

Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, a SAGE Company.

Teaching Tolerance. (n.d.). A new set of rules. Retrieved from

https://www.tolerance.org/professional-development/a-new-set-of-rules