Community Building
It's one of the big paradoxes of literacy instruction - students best learn how to read and write independently when they have a strong community of support in classrooms. How teachers build those thoughtful, kind, and challenging classroom communities is explained in these resources.
Latest Content
QuickTake: Chronicling Learning All Year
Tammy Mulligan shares a beginning-of-the-year routine where second graders create an identity frame. This becomes a place to highlight photographs of their learning each week throughout the school year.
QuickTake: Leave Space for Personalization
Melissa Quimby advises leaving space for students to personalize the classroom when they arrive to start the new school year.
Quick Take: Listen to Create a Sense of Belonging
Stella Villalba encourages all educators to listen to students to understand how to create a culture of belonging.
Using Daily Attendance Questions to Build Community and Communication Skills
Gretchen Schroeder is surprised to find benefits of a stronger community and communication skills through a practical attendance practice in her high school classroom.
What I Am Reading the First Week of School
Jen Court plans to fill the first days of first grade with experiences around books. Selecting books carefully to create a sense of community in the classroom from the very beginning is the goal of this first-week booklist.
Poems to Start the Year
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share poems to start the year that touch a variety of needs, from building community to connecting with colleagues to hosting parents for back-to-school night.
Honoring Student Identity (Download a Survey)
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share their authentic process for expanding their beginning-of-the-year student survey to make it more open for all students.
Creating a Classroom Emotional Intelligence Charter
Mandy Robek outlines the process for creating a class Emotional Intelligence Charter. She includes a booklist to help students expand their vocabulary of different emotions.
Join a Reading Community
Jen Vincent invites all educators to join a reading community by participating in the kidlit version of It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?
Bedtime Stories with a Mystery Reader
Tara Barnett and Kate Mills share a wonderful school-wide and home read aloud experience: Bedtime Mystery Reader. They outline all of the details to bring Bedtime Mystery Reader to your school.
Take a Chance
Julie Cox invites us to take risks in order to encourage students to try new things with their writing and reading. Julie concludes that when teachers are professional risk-takers, we are more available to students and know how to help them when they fail.
Student-Planned End-of-Year Celebration
Josie Stewart and Hannah Tills know the end of the school year is full, yet they take the time to reflect and celebrate what learners have built throughout the year by asking students to create a plan for a final celebration.
Presence Required
Christy Rush-Levine reminds us that it requires presence to sit alongside young readers and writers. In two examples, we find resilience for meeting students at their points of need and then teaching them as readers and writers.
Keeping Unity
When students feel safe, they are positioned to learn. Julie Cox shares ways to create a learning environment that brings unity to her high school classroom.
What Is Communication? A Mini-Inquiry Project and Booklist
Bitsy Parks leads her first-grade class in a study about communication to strengthen their socially distanced and muffled-by-masks community. Included is a booklist.
Creating a Community of Care: Beyond the Classroom Walls
Stella Villalba outlines three ways to cultivate a community for students beyond the classroom walls. There is comfort for teachers and students in knowing that a larger community is rooting for them.
The Classroom Library: Building Bridges
Cathy Mere presses to help children take the first steps in growing a sustainable reading life that carries beyond the classroom walls. She offers ways to build bridges to the school and public libraries as an essential step.
See Your Students
Shari Frost shares ways teachers can show that they “see” and appreciate each student every single day.
Bring In the School Year Like a Grandma
Julie Johnson reflects on how to help students know they belong and are valued in a classroom community.
Lead with Art, and Literacy Will Naturally Follow
Stella Villalba widens our perspective by sharing the link between art and literacy with suggested picture books to help build the bridge.
A Complete Circle: Identity, Growth, and Community
Bitsy Parks offers key end-of-the year activities that allow students to reflect and notice their identities, growth, and community as readers and writers.
Words of Wisdom and Passing the Torch
Melanie Quinn shares a fun activity to help current students share advice for next year’s class.
COVID Silver Linings: Positive Changes in Teaching Practices
Dana Murphy outlines the teaching practices that she learned from remote teaching and plans to carry with her upon returning to a physical classroom.
Adjusting to COVID: A Minimalist Classroom
Mandy Robek adjusts her mindset of preparing her classroom according to COVID guidelines and discovers an open heart and mind as she prepares a “minimalist classroom.”
Best Graphic Novel Adaptations for the Middle Grades
Shari Frost shares her favorite graphic novel adaptations for the middle grades.
Class Books Build Readers, Writers, and Community
Bitsy Parks shares the ways in which class books help students work as readers and writers, as well as build a community.
Teaching Summary
Christy Rush-Levine faces the challenge of helping her students see summary writing not as drudgery, but as a way to build more sophisticated thinking around texts.
One Text. One Conversation. Many Possibilities.
Matt Renwick explores ways in which whole-class conversations around one text can build a strong community as understanding is co-constructed.
Online Routines to Create Energetic Reading Communities
Melissa Quimby shares online routines to strengthen the class reading community.
Belonging in a School Community
Suzy Kaback thinks deeply about the concept of belonging as an essential part of building a school community.
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