Go Time: 10 Things to Do After You Get Your Class List [episode 149]

Emily  0:37

Hey, there, thanks for joining us today. Today, we’re sharing our best teacher approved tips for what to do once you finally get your class list and sharing some highlights from Episode 87, all about affirming your students.

Emily  0:50

So what are the things we can do when we get our class list, Heidi? Why don’t you start us off?

Heidi  0:56

Well there is just something about that moment when you get that list of names. And suddenly everything you’ve been worrying about and prepping for, it all just becomes real, real fast.

Emily  1:07

If it were a movie, the camera would do that thing or it moves out while zooming in at the same time. So you know, the character is reevaluating everything that they thought they knew.

Heidi  1:18

We that effect and realize that a filter. Yeah, something like that. It is a profound moment. And last, maybe you got your class list at the end of last year, that it might not be so profound.

Emily  1:30

Yeah, when you’re already burned out, it probably doesn’t have the same effect. But for those of us who have been haunting the front office for days, begging someone to please just give us a class list already, it is a momentous occasion.

Heidi  1:44

And the very first thing you should do when you get that list is to breathe. Take a deep breath in and out. And then scan the list for that one name, or maybe a few names that you are definitely hoping not to see.

Emily  2:01

And if you do see that and take some more deep breaths. It’ll be fine. You got this.

Heidi  2:08

And if you were lucky enough not to see that name, try not to gloat in front of your coworker who does have that name on their list.

Emily  2:16

It’ll be fine. We’ve all got this, right. Okay, we’ve breathed and saved your happy dance for the privacy of your classroom. Now what?

Heidi  2:24

Well, we have 10 tips for what you can do now that you finally have your list. I tried to put this in an order that makes sense chronologically, but there’s obviously a lot of wiggle room since so many school situations are different. Just you know, do what makes the most sense for you. But for me, the best place to start is with tip number one, which is to get the details.

Emily  2:48

Now I know that I like to start with checking in with last year’s teachers just to hear what they have to say about their kids. And I know this can be a controversial choice. But I figure I’m adult enough not to let another teachers criticism, color my relationship with my new student. Go ahead and do what’s best for you though.

Heidi  3:09

Yeah, for me, the rewards outweigh the risks. Last year’s teachers have a lot of useful information that wouldn’t necessarily be in a file. And a twice I had teachers prep me for students who had kidney issues and needed to be seated near the door so they could get to the bathroom ASAP.

Emily  3:27

Besides talking to last year’s teachers, you probably need to round up cumulative files. We had separate reading paths along files we had to keep. If student bus assignments are available, you might want to get a hold of those too. And definitely find out about any accommodations you need to make.

Heidi  3:44

Related to tip one is our second tip, learn how to pronounce names correctly. Even if you don’t want to talk to previous teachers about your students behaviors, it’s probably smart to ask them how to pronounce any names that you’re unsure of.

Emily  3:58

They can also let you know who prefers to go by a nickname.

Heidi  4:01

But having learned this the hard way, you might want to double check on that before you start labeling things. Sometimes preferences change over the summer.

Emily  4:09

Yeah. So if a student is new to your school and you need to learn their name, go back to the tip and episode 73 where we have five suggestions for respectfully learning students names.

Heidi  4:20

Okay, on to tip number three, which is to make home contact. Hopefully, hopefully I’ve got my fingers crossed for you. You’ve got enough time between getting your class list and school starting to make some kind of positive home contact.

Emily  4:34

If you want some ideas for how to welcome your students before school even starts, check out our July tip in the Teacher Summer Talks Summit. If you’re not signed up for that yet, it’s totally free and you can get all the tips from the summer even the new ones that just drop today at the link in our show notes.

Heidi  4:51

Okay, you’ve got the details. You know how to pronounce the names and you’ve made home contact. Let’s get started on tip four, arrange the desks.

Emily  5:00

So I know some teachers let students choose their own seats at the start of the year. However, there’s no chance on Earth that I would ever do that. I for sure assigned seats. So it was clear to students that there was a special place waiting just for them. And also, I’m a control freak. But mostly that there’s a special place here just for you.

Heidi  5:21

If you are assigning seats, make sure you have accounted for any accommodations. Beyond that at the start of the year, you really don’t have to sweat too much about your seating arrangement.

Emily  5:31

But even if you’re not focusing too much on having a strategic seating arrangement just yet, it’s not too early to set up your student names in our seating chart planning tool, we walk you through exactly how to maximize your seating arrangements to boost learning and positive behaviors. You can find the link to that in the show notes. And you can just plug in the names even if you’re not ready to start using the tool.

Heidi  5:52

Once your desks are set up, it is time to label all the things so much labeling.

Emily  5:59

I love this part. Tip number five, just prepare yourself, there’s a high chance of things changing in the next few days, which is the worst. But also you want things to be labeled. So you kind of have to take some gambling bets here.

Heidi  6:12

And even if you don’t want to label everything just yet, because you know there is that chance that your list might change, you should at least have your students names outside your door.

Emily  6:22

And that is tip number six to post your door display. If you want to have a big fancy Pinterest perfect door display, and you have the time and energy to make it happen. Go for it. If you want to stick to a big class list outside your door, that works just as well, we found.

Emily  6:39

The purpose of a door display is to assure kids that they’re in the right place. However you want to make that happen is the right way to do it.

Heidi  6:46

Tip seven is something we talked about in last Monday’s episode. And that is to prep your papers for any positive communication ahead of time. If you want to send each student notes during the year, print and label the papers now, so it will be easy to follow through with your good intentions. Even on those days when you are tired and busy.

Emily  7:06

Go back to Monday’s episode, episode 148 if you want more details about that. And then get started on tip eight, which is to get any needed back to school paperwork or ready to go.

Heidi  7:10

And you know, while we’re dealing with administrative tasks, let’s get started on tip nine, which is setting up the gradebook and any online accounts.

Emily  7:27

You especially want to make sure you have any needed student login information.

Heidi  7:32

And also that you have prepared a way for students to have access to their login information.

Emily  7:37

And that brings us to the 10th tip for what to do when you get your class list. And that is to set up your parent email group.

Heidi  7:44

You may as well get started on that you know you’re going to need it. And go ahead and add parents to any other communication systems that they’ll need to use.

Emily  7:53

That has a lot to consider and probably doesn’t even cover everything you need to do with this class list. So check out our school readiness checklists to help keep you on track with all of these tasks.

Heidi  8:04

And keep listening to this replay of Episode 87, where we talk about why affirming is the most important goal at the start of the school year.

Heidi  8:13

For me, one of my favorite parts of being a teacher is taking a group of little strangers at the start of the year, and working with them to create a positive classroom community by the end of the year.

Emily  8:26

Coming together as a connected group over the course of the year is really the magic of having a classroom.

Heidi  8:33

A few weeks ago, we talked about our ATTABOY back to school goals. ATTABOY stands for affirming, training, teaching and assessing the out of there at the beginning of the year. There’s your boy. In Episode 73, we explained why affirming is the most important of those goals.

Emily  8:52

So affirming students at the beginning of the year means intentionally creating a peaceful classroom that safe and welcoming to students. It’s looking for opportunities to give students ownership and choice.

Heidi  9:05

Affirming also means striving to recognize each student as a unique individual who contributes to our classroom in valuable ways. And of course, it’s also providing time for fun and community building activities.

Emily  9:19

It’s so easy to feel like you need to jump right into academics at the start of the school year. Right? You have math units to start. You need to teach the writing process and assess your students reading fluency. But spending time affirming your students at the beginning of the year makes all of the math and writing and reading and everything else you need to cover much more effective.

Heidi  9:42

It can be hard to remember when you feel so much pressure. But affirming matters because it’s how we build relationships with each other. It allows us to create a classroom space where students feel accepted and included.

Emily  9:55

That may seem minor, but it’s actually vital to your student’s success. When students feel accepted and included, it increases their engagement and increased engagement leads to improved academic outcomes and reduce behavior problems.

Heidi  10:11

So increased learning and decreased misbehavior is a win for everyone.

Emily  10:15

Isn’t that what every teacher wants?

Heidi  10:18

So really, the only downside to affirming is that you will have to be intentional about including it, it won’t just happen on its own.

Emily  10:28

So today, we’re going to share ways that you can affirm students not just at the beginning of the year, but all year long.

Heidi  10:35

To start with, it might help to think of your classroom community as a quilt or a puzzle. One piece by itself doesn’t do very much. However, the whole group is incomplete if even one of the pieces is missing. The quality of the whole depends on how well the pieces fit together.

Emily  10:52

For that reason, you’ll sometimes see Back to School activities where every student decorates a puzzle piece or quilt piece. And it’s assembled and hung on the wall as a way of showing how we combined to make something bigger than ourselves.

Heidi  11:05

That activity is a classic for a reason. So keep that image of a puzzle or quilt in your mind as we share some ideas for building your class community.

Emily  11:16

And because we’d love to list their lists, there are four areas we’re going to focus on. So in no particular order. The four ways to build class community are recognizing our students as individuals, building a positive class identity, making connections among class members and extending our community outside the classroom. Why don’t you tell us more about how we can recognize our students as individuals, Heidi.

Heidi 11:42

I would love to. So back in episode 73, we mentioned that student names should be visible somewhere in the classroom. Even if you use student numbers of labels, there should be named somewhere at the very least, they should be on the door so that your students know that they are in the spot that is meant for them.

Heidi  12:00

But there’s a lot more that can be done with names. Obviously, you can do the class puzzle or quilt activity. I’ve seen a lot of teachers like print off their student names and big bubble letters, and then they let the kids decorate them as a first art project.

Emily  12:14

Oh I love that. In our teacher approved Facebook group April shared a great way for helping students get to know each other’s names. She says, the first few weeks I do a king and queen of the day where I slowly pull out a name written on a sentence strip from an envelope and say things like this person’s name starts with a letter near the beginning of the alphabet. It makes a long vowel sound. And I give clues like that. We go over each letter and it sound as it’s pulled out.

Emily  12:41

Then when we finally go over the last letter, and everyone is up to speed on who it is I have the king or queen come stand by me. I put a paper crown on their head. I ask them a few questions and let the kids ask a few questions. Then we talk about how many syllables in their name, point out any features like Schwaz, double consonants, vowel teams, etc. Then everyone gets a half sheet of paper and we write the king or queens name on the bottom of the sheet, vowels in red constanants in black.

Emily  13:08

They draw a picture of the person and sign their own name on the back. As they finish. I gathered them and staple them together with a king of the day or queen of the day half sheet of paper, and they take it home that day. We do this every day until we run out of students.

Heidi  13:21

I love that idea. It incorporates so many important things. She’s teaching students how to use and respect each other’s names. She’s recognizing each student individually and helping the class get to know them. And she’s adding in some great phonics work.

Emily  13:36

Yeah, it’s such a good idea. But if your students are too old to enjoy being king or queen of the day, a student spotlight is a great alternative. You could spotlight one student a day or stretch it out over the school year with a student of the week.

Heidi  13:50

Maybe you could allow the student of the day or your student of the week to bring a show Intel to share with the class and then ask them some questions so everyone can get to know them better.

Emily  13:59

I know a lot of teachers have students bring a poster to share. But just a suggestion to maybe consider finding a way to recognize your students without giving the parents something they have to do. This doesn’t come from personal feelings or experience at all.

Heidi  14:16

Student of the day or student of the week is definitely an investment of time, particularly if you have a large class. But think of how great each kid feels when they get their chance to be recognized.

Emily  14:28

Yeah, building classroom community does take time, but it’s never wasted time.

Heidi  14:33

It’s more like an investment in developing the best versions of your students.

Emily  14:38

And remember, community building doesn’t happen unless we’re intentional about making it happen. So besides recognizing our students as individuals, what else can we do to build classroom community Heidi?

Heidi  14:50

Well, we can work on building a positive class identity. That is actually one of my favorite things to do as a teacher.

Emily  14:58

There are probably so many ways You’re already building a positive class identity. When you set high expectations for students and hold them accountable for meeting them, you’re building class identity.

Heidi 15:09

And along with that explicitly teaching your procedures and expectations does a lot for shaping your class identity, as does celebrating mistakes and fostering a growth mindset culture.

Emily  15:21

Those are some of the big ways that your class identity is shaped. But there are lots of little ways to contribute to a positive culture. You can make it a priority to greet students in the morning, you can set up a teacher mailbox so students can write to you.

Heidi  15:34

If you’re brave, you could even have a class pet.

Emily  15:38

And if you’re like us, and you are not that brave, you can have a class mascot instead.

Heidi  15:43

Yeah, that’s much more my speed. I did have a class book fairy one year, which was super fun. Yes, but my favorite way to shape class identity is through morning meeting.

Emily  15:55

Love morning meeting. Morning meeting has such a big impact on the culture of a classroom. And episode 28 of the podcast, we shared everything you need to know about launching morning meeting. That’s a must listen, if you need help launching it for the first time, or you just want to make sure you’re getting it off on the right foot this year.

Emily  16:13

If you take nothing away from this episode, its do morning meeting we promise that’s the thing that will build your classroom community more than anything.

Heidi  16:22

But really any activity that brings students together is also building your class identity. And one of the best shared activities is a read aloud.

Emily  16:30

I love read alouds. There’s something almost magical about gathering everyone in for a storytime. I read to my students multiple times every day.

Heidi  16:40

Oh, I did too. I couldn’t get enough of reading my kids. I do that all day if I could. Any book that lends itself to a meaningful discussion will help build your class community. But some great ones for back to school are Our Class is a Family by Shannon Olsen, several teachers in our Facebook group recommended that one. And that same author also wrote A Letter From Your Teacher on the First Day of School.

Emily  17:01

I love both of those books. Of course, there’s the classic First Day Jitters too. And LaNesha Tabb has a fun pair of books, you’re meant to read a Teacher’s Top Secret Confidential at the Beginning of the Year, and a Teacher’s Top Secret Mission Accomplished at the End of the Year. And they both have a great message about how special the kids in your class are.

Heidi  17:21

There are so many more fun back to school books these days that when I started teaching, I know it’s kind of a shame that you can’t stretch back to school books all year long.

Emily  17:31

You have to pack in as many as you can in those first few days because they’re so good. And remind yourself that you’re helping kids develop a love of reading and building classroom community by spending lots of time reading those books.

Heidi  17:43

So really, you’re kind of obligated to read them all.

Emily  17:46

Mm hmm. It’s true. Besides reading all the books, what else can we do to build a positive class identity?

Heidi  17:54

Several teachers in our Facebook group mentioned that they use STEM activities to build community. Angie said that she particularly liked the activity Saving Sam, which involves a gummy worm.

Emily  18:05

And I wasn’t familiar with this. So I watched a video about it. The kids work as groups to rescue a gummy worm. It looks like a lot of fun, and I can definitely see how it would build a positive feeling in the classroom.

Heidi  18:17

And having kids work together is a great way to meet our next suggestion of making connections among class members. We want kids to see their classmates as their teammates, and solving problems together like saving a gummy worm is a great way to do that.

Emily  18:33

The beginning of the year lends itself to get to know you activities. A fun one that gets kids up and moving is find someone who it’s like a mini scavenger hunt. Find someone who has a pet, find someone who likes to swim, find someone who likes a food that you like, it’s a great way for kids to start making connections with their classmates.

Heidi  18:52

And hopefully, they’ll find out that they have more in common than we thought.

Emily  18:56

Your seating arrangement can also go a long way toward helping students make connections. Even if you move the kids to rows in a few weeks, starting the year with your desks in arranged tables, sends the message that we value teamwork here.

Heidi  19:09

And of course, the very best way to build connections among people is to play and laugh together. Look for opportunities to have fun as a class. You can even make it part of your daily routine, Jeff from our community, so that he starts off the school day by sharing a Laffy Taffy joke.

Emily  19:27

You can’t go wrong with a cheesy joke. And we like to laugh and connect with our students every day with our daily morning messages, which we use as part of our morning meetings. And we’ll link to those slides in the show notes.

Heidi  19:40

Okay, so we are recognizing individual students, building a positive class identity, helping make connections among class members. Emily, what’s the fourth way we can build class community?

Emily  19:51

We can do that by extending our class’s impact outside of our classroom. That might look like having your class write thank you notes to a school helper, or bringing in the soccer balls that have been abandoned on the playground.

Heidi  20:03

You can look for all of the little ways that your students can make an impact. Or maybe you want to implement a dedicated kindness program, or raise awareness of an important cause.

Emily  20:14

Working as a class to provide service is one of the most powerful ways to build relationships. This does require more planning and forethought than most of the suggestions we’ve made in this episode. It’s okay, if that feels too far outside of what you can handle right now. Take what works for you here and leave the rest.

Heidi  20:32

But even if you don’t feel like you couldn’t take that on, I would recommend maybe tucking the suggestion into your back pocket as a just in case. If you have got a tricky class, maybe class that argues a lot or is very cliquish, providing them with a meaningful way to make an impact might be the answer you need.

Emily  20:51

Yeah, it’s definitely easier to plan a service opportunity than it is to referee kids fighting all day.

Heidi  20:57

Having a positive classroom community won’t solve all of your teacher headaches, but it is a huge step in the right direction.

Emily  21:06

So as you’re launching this new school year, look for ways to recognize your students as individuals, build a positive class identity, make connections among students and extend your class outside your room.

Emily  21:18

We would love to hear your thoughts on how you build classroom community. Come join the conversation in our teacher proofed Facebook group.

Heidi  21:26

That’s it for today’s episode, use our 10 tips for what to do once you finally get your class list.

Emily  21:33

And don’t forget, if you haven’t yet come register for our free Teacher Summer Talks Summit, and get caught up on all the awesome tips that have been shared all summer long. We will link to that in the show notes.