4 Ways to Build Relationships & Community During The First Weeks of Distance Learning

There’s no doubt that teacher-student relationships and class community are the pulse of the classroom and are what drive teaching and learning. I talk about this in many of my posts about Responsive Classroom, Back to School, and Classroom Management, including my upcoming video session, The Building Blocks For Strong Classroom Management.

The first few weeks of school are critical for building relationships and classroom community. If you’re anything like me you may be losing sleep over the fact that we may not start the year off with meeting our students, their families, and building and nurturing the relationships that are so needed. I am worried that my students will lose out on making connections and relationships with their peers that form that classroom bond that is important to social development. This bond is necessary between teachers and students, as well as peers, in order to create an environment that is conducive for teaching and learning.

But COVID-19 has other plans. Plans that interfere with us resuming school as “normal” and building relationships and community. But that doesn’t mean it CAN’T be done. In fact, it can be done and it will be done. Here’s how!

Meet The Teacher Letter or Postcards

If in-person relationship building is not an option, then try to get hold of your class list and mail out postcards with a note to your students or a letter about yourself to start the introduction. You’ve probably have seen or done this before but I think this is especially important for this upcoming school year. Be sure to include a picture of yourself because your incoming students want to see you. They want to get to know you. They want to know about your hobbies, your interests, your family, and even your pets. Imagine how excited your students will be to receive a letter in the mail from their teacher. Sending this to your students as early as possible will ease their anxiety about meeting a new teacher “virtually.”

Weekly Phone Calls

It’s going to take more effort on our part to connect with kids and their families. Make a phone call home to speak with each of your students and their parents once a week just to talk for about 5-15 minutes. This will make a huge difference in building student-teacher relationships. This will also help your students feel more connected & comfortable with you. To manage this, use a google doc for students/parents to sign up for a time when they are available that will not interfere with work for both parents and students. Use a class checklist to keep track of calling students weekly.

Daily Morning Meetings

Investing the time in building relationships and classroom community in Morning Meeting during the first 6 weeks of school is the most important thing to do. Building relationships & classroom community will make remote teaching and learning a lot easier. During the past school year when schools closed due to COVID-19, we were going into our 4^th marking period. Fortunately, my students and I already had built relationships and classroom community so we only had a morning meeting once per week. But this is different. Starting off the school year without those relationships it is going to be critical for starting off strong. Try doing a Zoom morning meeting every day for about 20 minutes.

We know that parents and students with multiple siblings need devices to do their work so a daily morning meeting might pose a problem. It’s okay if students can not attend the morning meeting every day. Maybe have meetings Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Create a schedule that works for you and your students. Just remember that the purpose of these meetings is to get to know your students, so if they all don’t show up every day, a smaller group might be easier to manage and to get to know.

Perhaps after about 4 weeks or so,  just post a daily morning message and have just one weekly morning meeting. Just like in class I would write my morning message on a whiteboard easel. My students would respond to the morning message upon arrival. During distance learning, I posted a morning message as part of our daily morning work. During the first weeks of school tie your morning message with getting to know you activities/questions/prompts to build class community and develop peer relationships:

• Student favorites (books, music, movies, food, subjects, etc)
• Student hobbies & interests outside of school
• Hopes and dreams
• Students’ family, culture & traditions
• Fascinations/passions/curiosities
• Social-emotional prompts
• Character education

Example Morning Meeting

Greeting: Good Morning Greeting– Each child greets another classmate by saying good morning and the student’s name.

Jayden greets Ellie. “Good Morning, Ellie.” Ellie replies, Good Morning, Jayden. Ellie greets another classmate and the greeting continues until all students have been greeted. Make sure that each student greets each other by name. This type of greeting is especially important in learning each other’s names.

Other types of greetings:

• Foreign Language- “Bonjour, Mrs. Weis” “Bonjour, Jayden”
• Formal Greeting- students greet each other using a Ms. or Mr. followed by their last name
• Virtual greetings: air high five, air fist pump, peace sign, salute, thumbs up, wave, namaste, heart fingers, air hug

Share: A few students share each day with some news of interest to the class and respond to each other with thoughtful questions/comments, practicing communication skills, and learning about one another.

Students can share something about themselves, something they’re looking forward to, a special event, an achievement, or something that is happy or sad. It’s a way for peers to get to know each other better and build classroom community. It also strengthens speaking and listening skills. I model preparing Morning Meeting Share by having students think about the main idea of what they are going to share and then using the 5 finger rule to stay focused on sharing the most important details.

You can create a schedule or sign up to have a certain number of students share each day or have a voluntary share each day.

Activity: Morning Meeting activities are meant to be fun. The activity involves the whole class doing a short activity together, building class cohesion through active participation. One of our favorites is:

Fact or Fiction, or otherwise known as Two Truths and a Lie- One student says three things about themselves, 2 statements are facts and one is a lie. Classmates have to guess which statement is a lie. (Getting to Know You Activity)

We also do scavenger hunts, play Scattegories, do a show and tell, get moving with Go Noodle, freeze dance, etc. The possibilities are endless.

Morning Message: Revisit the morning message you already have posted or will post live with your students and discuss the responses with your students.

Morning Meeting this year may look and sound a little different in those of the past but it will still provide an opportunity for students to make connections with others and for teachers to get to know the students as well.

I already planned out week 1 of my Morning Messages. You can grab a copy of these messages by filling in the form below. I’ll send them right to your inbox!

Get to know your students with interest surveys. I usually ask about 5 -10 questions/prompts that give me a snapshot of my students. This helps me to get to know each of them, make connections, call them out on certain interests and helps me pair students with other students that have similar interests or personalities. I keep in mind that most of my students already know each other from previous grades, the neighborhood, sports, extracurricular activities, etc but new friendships can always be made. It’s me who really needs to get to know all of my students, as well as my students getting to know me. Interest surveys also help me drive my instruction and planning. This is an important engagement strategy, especially during distance learning. Check out these FREE student interest surveys here. I found a few digital surveys as well to get you started in learning more about your students’ interests. If none of these surveys fit, it’s pretty easy to make your own survey in Google Forms.

*IMPORTANT: If you teach ESL/ELL students, it’s a good idea to think about ways to translate all of your communication (emails and newsletters) into different languages. Ask your ELL support teacher for the best way to do this. 

Take-Home Points:

• Mail postcards or Meet The Teacher letter to your students to introduce yourself
• Call home weekly just to talk and connect with your students and their parents
• Have a daily Zoom Morning Meeting to build class community and to get to know each other
• Send out interest surveys to get to know your students better

I hope these ideas get you off to a great start. Distance learning is definitely not an ideal situation for teachers, parents, or students, and there is no place I’d rather be than in the classroom with my students. But for the sake of our health and safety, we are going to have to do our best during a global pandemic.

How do you plan on building relationships and class community during distance learning?

Going back to school face to face? Don’t give up on those morning meetings. Read How To Have a Morning Meeting With Social Distancing.

Related Posts: 

Starting The Year Off Right With Responsive Classroom

3 Ways to Effectively Build Student Teacher Relationships

Managing Student Behavior Responsive Classroom Style

How To Use Positive Teacher Language To Empower Students

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