We have been hard at work creating a safe and collaborative classroom community. This school-wide PBL was launched the first week of school with a team challenge.

Our Driving Question:

How do we create a school community that ROARs (Respects Others and Acts Responsibly) at all times in all environments?

I asked the kids to build the tallest tower with cups. Each group received an equal number of cups. I did not give many directions and I did not speak of expected behavior. While they were building, I walked around and jotted down positive actions as well as negative ones but I did not intervene very much. I shared in general terms things we were doing well and areas we needed to work on. This was our base-line challenge.

As the days went on we studied  collaborative videos to establish norms for working with groups. We tested our progress with another team challenge. Make a tower of cups but this time with an added twist, they could not touch the cups with their hands!

The kids reflected on their growth from challenge one and two. We then focused on the type of classroom that we wanted so that we could create a classroom pledge that would reflect our needs.

We continued to study strong examples of collaboration and engage in class and group challenges. Each time we reflected on our growth and established norms for our class or determined areas of focus.

We have spent the first 3 weeks dedicating time to challenging, reflecting and creating a community of learners that trust and respect each other. We ended by creating a bulletin board that will be up all year that answers the driving question in our classroom. It is filled with statements made by the kids and pictures that they staged to model these ideals.

We now turn our focus to the wider school community. We will spend the next week determining a need for our school community and deciding on a way to support De Vargas and help us all ROAR!

These kiddos just amaze me! I can’t wait to see what they decide to do and I share it with you all! Go Lions!