Find the Fiction:

Team Building

According to Kagan (2009), team building is an approach to

constituting a positive and effective learning environment through
creating small teams of mixed ability students in which various learning
activities to improve their understanding. Moreover, each team member
must hold a dependable role in the team. Therefore, team building plays
a vital role in creating a sense of trust and supportiveness within the team.
For my team building activity, I have chosen teams to utilize Find
the Fiction, which is inspired by Kagan (2009). This team building activity
consists of students picking out a fictitious statement fro a set of three
statements about their team member. Each student will write down the
facts a false statement and then, each student reads their statement one
at a time and the rest of the members have to guess the false statement.
This is a great team building strategy, as it is personal and allows members
to get on a deeper level with their team members in which trust can be
built on. Hence, creating an effective cooperative learning environment.
This activity can be modified to be based on content in which
students will apply a higher level of thinking to the specific content area.
A teacher can even use this tactic to check for students understanding.

Find the Fiction

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Find the Fiction:

Classroom Building

According to Evertson and Emmer (2013) building a community

within the classroom is essential to have a positive and effective learning
environment and moreover, a well managed classroom. Therefore,
having classroom activities will play a key part in creating a community
within the classroom.
For a classroom building activity, I have chosen to do the beach
ball activity. This activity consists of each section of the beach ball having
an about you question on it. The students must answer the question that
their left thumbs falls on when grabbing the tossed ball from another
student. This activity derived my classroom management course, which
was implemented by Evans (2014). In addition, this activitys philosophy of
team building within the classroom is supported by Kagan (2009).
This activity is great for building a community within the classroom,
as students will get to know each other on a more personal level.
Moreover, a teacher can modify this activity into creating actual team
building activities on it, having brain breaks on it, or to get content
specific add content related questions. For this plan, though, adding
personal questions and prompts will be an excellent tool for creating a
sense of accepting and community within the classroom.

Google Images (2014)

Possible Questions That I Will Include on the Beach Ball:

If you were able to have a conversation with any famous person

that has passed, who would it be? (Upper grade levels)

What is your favorite subject? Why?

What is you favorite color?

What is your best summer memory?

What is your favorite season?

Hot or cold?

If you were an animal, what animal would you be?

If you were a superhero, what would you power have?

If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would
you choose?

Make Your Community

Warmer:
Community Outreach

While it is vital for an educator to create a sense of community

within the classroom, it is also important for the teacher to show that being
involved in the community surrounding the school is important, too. Being
involved in the community gives students the sense of involvement in their
surrounding and moreover, developing the virtue characteristic of
volunteering and helping their community.
The project I have designed is titled, Make Your Community
Warmer. This project consists of students creating, raising funds, and or
donating warm clothing items for those who are unable to keep
themselves warm during the harsh, winter months. Students have the
option of how they would like to contribute, as each option was carefully
thought into what type of funds a student will afford to contribute. In other
words, students can either raise money for blanket products, create
blankets, or donate warm clothing products (i.e. new socks, blankets,
etc.).
This project is designed to give students the sense of involvement in
their community and moreover, to be contributing members of their
community.
Note: The newsletter below will be adapted once I am placed
in my own classroom. I will change the newsletter to identify
which specific shelter the class will be donating to, in addition
to making sure this an actual, local shelter to truly support the
community.

Make Your
Community Warmer!
Dear Parents/Guardians:
Starting this November, Miss Diazs class will be having a
community service project. The project this year is Make Your
Community Warmer. We will be working with our local citys
homeless shelter to raise funds, donate, and/ or create warm
items for those who are unable to provide themselves proper
warm items for the harsh winter that lies ahead.
Your child has three options to be a part of our community
service project:
1. Raise funds by selling school provided Hersheys chocolate
products to local businesses, family, and friends.
2. Create a blanket, scarf, or hate with using either the raised
funds or personal funds. (Most students like to make the tie
blankets. They are really cheap, too!)
3. Donate a new blanket, scarf, pair of socks, etc. Please ask
about items to donate if they were not listed.
With your help, we can help those in our community, who truly
need our help to survive this winter. If you have any questions
comments, or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at
Diaz@school.com.

Sincerely,
Miss Diaz

References
Evertson, C. M., & Emmer, E. T. (2013). Classroom management for
elementary teachers (9th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.
Kagan, S. & Kagan, M. (2009). Kagan Cooperative Learning. San
Clemente, CA: Kagan Publishing.
Evans, E. (2014) Cooperative Learning, Part 1[PowerPoint Slides].