From Marlene.....

During the faculty meeting this week, I asked everyone to think about making INTENTIONAL connections in their classrooms, so I did the same. I had made the comment that most (probably at least 80%) of my honors students feed in here from Hebron and maybe a few (15%) from Stockwell. Then I always have a couple who come from another elementary school. I make informal connections all the time as do we all, so I never really thought about how my students were connecting with each other. They seemed to get along and I have them sitting in cooperative groups, so I they must be connecting, right?

So today, I wrote some of the questions I shared on Wed. (What part of the hamburger would you be? Who is the smartest person you know? What is your favorite tv show?, etc) on notecards and gave a notecard to each group. They had about 2 minutes to answer (everyone had to answer) and discuss. Then I asked them to switch groups and to not move with the same people in the previous group. Answer a different question, move again…you get the picture. This took about 10 min.

They seemed to really enjoy the activity and had a lot of fun. Who would have thought that one of my sweet little girls considered herself the onion on the hamburger or that one student had always thought that another student who happened by chance to be in her group was the smartest person she knew. She said she had thought of him as the smartest person ever since kindergarten! (Of course, I thought I would be the smartest person they knew…ha ha). So after the activity, I asked the students if they knew WHY we just did that activity. Ha ….interesting answers. (1) We’d been working so hard on research and the SS test, that we just needed a break from working. (2) We are getting ready to do book clubs and I needed to see who worked well with others. (3) We just finished our SS unit and I didn’t want to start a new chapter on a Friday, so we did this to have something to do instead of SS. Loved hearing what they thought, but then one of my students who came from one of the non-feeder elementary schools said “so we could get to know one another a little better.” WOW!!!! The others who felt connected saw it as an activity as just something to do…….the one(s) not connected saw it as an opportunity to connect. This reinforces my choice to continue with INTENTIONAL connection activities. What about you? What happened to you this week?? PLEASE SHARE!!!!!

marlene