# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Teachers have long known that feeling safe and secure in school helps students focus their energy on learning. And the research bears that out: A 2018 study found that when teachers deliberately foster a sense of belonging by greeting each student at the door of the class, they see "significant improvements in academic engaged time and reductions in disruptive behavior."

Edutopia covered that study last year, and we've shared many other ideas from teachers for ensuring that every student in the classroom feels like they belong.

Some of the activities below take less than five minutes. They're divided up among the grades, but many can apply across all of the years from kindergarten to 12th grade.

Elementary School

Shout-Outs: This is a quick way for students to celebrate each other for doing a job well or for attempting something difficult. Shout-outs can be incorporated at any point in a class. First-grade teacher Valerie Gallagher of Providence, Rhode Island, rings a chime when she wants to get the class's attention to ask who has a shout-out.

"It's not just me as the teacher saying, 'You're doing well'-it's a way for them to interact with each other and celebrate positivity," says Gallagher.

Friendly Fridays: Elizabeth Peterson, a fourth-grade teacher in Amesbury, Massachusetts, uses Friendly Fridays as a simple way for students to lift each other and themselves up. Peterson has her students write a friendly, anonymous note to a classmate, practice using positive self-talk, or use storytelling to give a peer a pep talk.

Sharing Acts of Kindness: Fifth-grade teacher Marissa King, of Tulsa, Oklahoma, shares two activities that encourage kindness. In the first, the teacher gives students secret kindness instructions, such as writing an anonymous note to a peer who is struggling in one of their classes.

The second activity revolves around noticing others' acts of kindness: When a student sees a peer tidying up in the classroom, for example, they can post a thank you note on a shared digital "kindness wall." Both activities coach students to be kind to their peers in the hope that they'll begin to practice kindness unprompted.

Middle School

Paper Tweets: To build community in her seventh-grade classroom, Jill Fletcher of Kapolei Middle School in Kapolei, Hawaii, created a bulletin board modeled on Twitter. Students use a template to create a profile, and they enlist at least three followers-a friend, an acquaintance, and someone they don't interact with much.
Courtesy of Jill Fletcher
When the class does this activity-which takes about 45 minutes to set up the first time-Fletcher has them respond to prompts about their current mood or new things happening in their lives, and then their followers respond.

Class Norms: Bobby Shaddox, a seventh-grade social studies teacher at King Middle School in Portland, Maine, has his students develop a set of norms for themselves-adjectives that describe them as a community of learners. Having students come up with their own norms creates "a pathway toward belonging for every single student in that class," says Dr. Pamela Cantor, founder of Turnaround for Children.

"Instead of a top-down list of rules that a teacher gives a class, these are words that we generated together," says Shaddox. "It helps us own the behavior in the classroom."

Group Salutes: A moment shared between two or more students at the beginning or end of an activity, a Group Salute is a teacher-prompted interaction that is a quick, low-prep way to cultivate community. The shared gesture can be physical-like a high five-or social-a teacher could ask students to express gratitude to their group members.

There's some interesting data supporting this idea: Researchers found that NBA teams whose players touch the most early in the season-high fives, fist bumps, etc.-had the best records later for the season.

High School

Morning Meetings: Morning meetings have long been a staple of elementary classrooms, but they can help students in all grades transition into class. Riverside School, a pre-K to 12th-grade school in Ahmedabad, India, uses a version of morning meetings at every grade level as "a pure relationship-building time." Bonding exercises led by teachers or students include physical or social and emotional activities, or discussions of sensitive topics like bullying.

Appreciation, Apology, Aha: As a quick, daily closing activity, students gather in a circle and share an appreciation of one of their peers, an apology, or a light bulb moment. The teacher models the activity by sharing and then asks for volunteers to speak.

"Those types of appreciations and community recognitions can go a long way toward building bonds," explains Aukeem Ballard, an educator with Summit Public Schools in the San Francisco Bay Area.

"A low-stakes thorn might be 'I feel tired.' Yet many students choose to share more personal items, like 'My thorn is that my dog is sick and I'm really worried about her,'" writes Alex Shevrin Venet, a former school leader at a trauma-informed high school.

Snowball Toss: Students anonymously write down one of their stressors on a piece of paper, crumple it up, gather in a circle, and throw their paper balls in a mock snowball fight. When that's done, they pick up a snowball and read it aloud.

"The idea is that we're moving around. We're able to have fun, laugh, scream, be loud, and then have that discussion about stress," says Marcus Moore, an advisory leader at Urban Prep School in Chicago.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
These community-building ideas for the classroom can help teachers ensure that students in every grade feel like they belong.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Morning Meeting Group Activity during COVID-19

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Sample Morning Meetings: Group Activity - Toe-to-Toe

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Morning Meeting Activities: Sparkle Activity

# data[].attributes.body
Or find article here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hN0iSOy-6eWqVB6tGt4VYhl0mDkh9e1zRAmzXiPmJ6w/edit?usp=sharing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In the novel, Squeers is hell-bent on making sure that his students leave school with the knowledge they need to be "serviceable" in the adult world. It's not so different today. Everyone is worried about whether kids are "learning what they need" to get into college, finding good jobs, getting along in a big company, and learning new trades. The country's whole school system seems geared toward solving large-scale economic woes and producing future workers. It's most definitely not geared toward children. In fact, the prevailing view is that if teachers focus too much on students' pleasure they will somehow be encouraging wanton self-indulgence and dangerous hedonism.

A look at what goes on in most classrooms these days makes it abundantly clear that when people think about education, they are not thinking about what it feels like to be a child, or what makes childhood an important and valuable stage of life in its own right. This may explain why so many schools that I visit seem more like something out of a Dickens novel than anything else.

I'm a mother of three, a teacher, and a developmental psychologist. So I've watched a lot of children-talking, playing, arguing, eating, studying, and being, well, young. Here's what I've come to understand. The thing that sets children apart from adults is not their ignorance, nor their lack of skills. It's their enormous capacity for joy. Think of a 3-year-old lost in the pleasures of finding out what he can and cannot sink in the bathtub, a 5-year-old beside herself with the thrill of putting together strings of nonsensical words with her best friends, or an 11-year-old completely immersed in a riveting comic strip. A child's ability to become deeply absorbed in something, and derive intense pleasure from that absorption, is something adults spend the rest of their lives trying to return to.

A friend told me the following story. One day, when he went to get his 7-year-old son from soccer practice, his kid greeted him with a downcast face and a despondent voice. The coach had chastised him for not paying attention and not focusing on his soccer drills. The little boy walked out of the school with his head drooping downwards, shoulders slumped, dragging his way towards the car. He seemed wrapped in sadness. But just before he reached the car door, he suddenly stopped, crouching down to peer at something on the sidewalk. His face went down lower and lower, and then, with complete ebullience he called out, "Dad. C'mere. This is the most amazing bug I've ever seen. It has, like, a million legs. Look at this. It's awesome." He looked up at his father, his features brimming with energy and delight. "Can't we stay here for just a minute? I want to find out what he does with all those legs. This is the coolest ever."

The traditional view of such moments is that they constitute a charming but irrelevant byproduct of youth-something to be pushed aside to make room for more important qualities, like perseverance, obligation, and practicality. Yet moments like this one are just the kind of intense absorption and pleasure adults spend the rest of their lives seeking. In his masterpiece essay, Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud described childhood as a period of trying to balance primal urges to find pleasure and avoid pain with the growing need to be part of a group. Every piece of research since that essay has shown that Freud was right. Human lives are governed by the desire to experience joy. Becoming educated should not require giving up joy but rather lead to finding joy in new kinds of things: reading novels instead of playing with small figures, conducting experiments instead of sinking cups in the bathtub, and debating serious issues rather than stringing together nonsense words, for example. In some cases, schools should help children find new, more grown-up ways of doing the same things that are perennial sources of joy: making art, making friends, making decisions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the novel, Squeers is hell-bent on making sure that his students leave school with the knowledge they need to be "serviceable" in the adult world. It's not so different today. Everyone is worried about whether kids are "learning what they need" to get into college, finding good jobs, getting along in a big company, and learning new trades.

# data[].attributes.body
In your text, read pgs. 131-151  This chapter will help you understand the vital role that group activities play in creating joy and deepening positive and authentic relationships with our students and community. Make sure to look at pages 152-167 that have many examples of Activities to use!

After watching the videos and doing the readings and in your text and on the padlet;

Choose 10 Activities you will use at the beginning of the year to start off your classes work in Morning Meeting and building that solid and vital structure in the morning.

Make a list of the 10 Activities you will use (ideally in the order that you believe will work the best at the beginning of the year and grow throughout those first few weeks)

List the materials you will need for each activity