Scholastic Website - New Teacher Survival Guide
24/10/2011 21:08
Scholastic have a great range of information for teachers, including New and Early Career...
Knowing Your Students
Getting to know your students is extremely important when it comes to creating a safe and positive learning environment (McBurney-Fry 2002). During the first few weeks of school, it is vital to create a positive relationship with each individual student in your class, their parents and caregivers, along with other teachers in your stage group and school. This in turn develops and maximises learning outcomes and episodes.
As Caitlin didn't have a finalised class until week 4, the activities below can be done quickly to ensure that you still develop the foundations to building positive relationships with your student and parent community.
Ice breakers are a great idea to introduce new students to each other and develop similarities with new peers.
Below are some different PDF resources from the www.teachervision.fen.com/ website to help you.
This handout is for students to finish writing each of the sentences on themselves, or their partner.
GettingToKnowYou_Bingo.pdf (57,7 kB)
Getting To Know you Bingo allows for students to write the name of a different student in each box who fits the descriptor.
GettingToKnowYou_Game.pdf (58,7 kB)
The Getting To Know You Game is for students to try and find at least one classmate in the room who fits into the categories on the page. The student is to write down their initials in the box and try and have as many initials as possible in each box.
This form is for parents to fill out about their child within your class. This allows for you, the teacher, to know their child better and build a professional relationship with the parents.
Further Readings:
Groundwater-Smith, S, Ewing, R & Le Cornu R 2007, Teaching challenges and dilemmas, 3rd edn, Thomson Social Science Press, Melbourne, VIC.
Whitton, D, Sinclair, C, Barker, K, Nanlohy, P & Nosworthy, M 2004, Learning for teaching: Teaching for learning. Thomson Social Science Press, Melbourne, VIC.
Acer eNews - Effective Teaching Practices