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Networking for Kidpreneurs: Tips & Strategies for Parents

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Networking for Kidpreneurs: Tips & Strategies for Parents

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Networking for Kidpreneurs: Tips & Strategies for Parents

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Get the scoop on Networking for Kidpreneurs! Learn how to help your child succeed as a Kidpreneur. Teach them the benefits, tips & strategies of networking.

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Helping Students Understand their Support System

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Helping Students Understand their Support System

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Social Emotional Workshop | The Tools to Build Social Emotional Skills

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Helping Students Understand Their Support System | Social Emotional Workshop

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Understanding your support system is a key social and emotional skill. Students benefit from exploring who to count on, when, and how.

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Effective Networking: 6 Secrets Your Kids Know

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Effective Networking: 6 Secrets Your Kids Know

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Effective Networking: 6 Secrets Your Kids Know

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Kids can teach us a lot about networking. They have no agenda, they play...Try working a few of these simple tricks into your networking.

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How Preschoolers Form Relationship-Building Skills & How You Can Help the Process

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Creating a Sense of Classroom Community in Your Preschool

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Creating a Sense of Classroom Community in Your Preschool

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Imagine being in a place where you feel accepted, supported, and connected to the people around you. Doesn't it sound like a place you'd feel happy and excited about going to every day? That's what a classroom community feels like for a child.

Alongside their family environment, a child often first discovers a sense of belonging and connection in a classroom community. Having a positive classroom community is essential for children's social and emotional well-being and encourages them to participate fully in the classroom, improving learning outcomes.

Building a classroom community is an all-year endeavor that requires planning and resources. Read on to discover why it's important and how to promote and build one in your program for a successful school year.

What is a classroom community?

A classroom community is a learning space where children feel a sense of belonging and connection to their peers and teachers. It builds relationships among children, between children and teachers, and between teachers and families.

Building a classroom community is a team effort. You must work with your children to create an environment where every class member feels valued, welcome, and confident that their needs will be met. When children feel connected to their community, they trust their peers and teachers to support them and cheer them on.
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Why is building a classroom community important?

For children, entering a classroom for the first time can be exciting but scary. They're joining a new community away from their families, so it's important that they feel welcome. Building a classroom community helps to keep children more engaged and receptive to learning because they feel safe and valued. When children worry about being bullied or fear for their safety, their learning will suffer.

A safe and welcoming classroom also helps children develop their social and emotional skills . As they spend more time in this type of environment, they will grow in self-confidence and develop positive relationships, decision-making abilities, a sense of identity, and empathy. A classroom community also encourages cooperation, teamwork, and the ability to draw on each other's skills.

Building a classroom community helps teachers manage classrooms more efficiently. Establishing classroom rules and following a daily routine helps to reduce behavioral issues because children know what behavior is expected of them and what to expect throughout their day. Additionally, giving children responsibilities reduces their dependency on you.

Classroom community also builds trust between teachers and families. Parents and guardians feel confident that their child is in an extension of their loving and accepting home environment. This assures them that their child will thrive in all areas of development.

How to promote classroom community

The first six weeks of the school year are critical to developing connections in the classroom. However, building a classroom community is a year-long undertaking, which you can facilitate with the strategies below:

Start before school starts

Why wait until school starts to build a connection with your children and their families? Start before you even meet them. Send out letters or call them. Introduce yourself and let them know you're excited about having their child in your class.

Then ask about the child: their interests, likes, and dislikes. Next, ask them to share the child's favorite photo (particularly where they're happiest), so you can add it to the class photo wall or bulletin board. Finally, ask them how they prefer to keep in touch.

Give children responsibilities

In addition to daily tasks like hanging up their backpacks and putting out their lunchboxes, children should also have other responsibilities. Assigning classroom jobs helps children learn about independence and responsibility for their environment. In addition, they learn how to work with their peers and see how teamwork gets tasks done quicker.

Assign the children different jobs each week, so they understand how to do each job. You can also have two children doing the same job so they can learn to work together to complete a task. Create a jobs chart so that everyone can see who's doing each job for the week. When children know you trust them to be leaders, they feel proud and work toward maintaining that trust.

Make the rules together

Making classroom rules together gives children a sense of accountability and makes them feel valued. They'll be more inclined to follow rules they helped create than those you've established. Make the rules short and simple so they're easy to remember.

Discuss important values like patience, respect, and honesty, and talk to the children regularly about how classroom rules keep everyone safe. When behavioral issues come up, discuss them with the children and ask for their input on possible solutions while communicating your expectations as the teacher. Then, you can revise the rules when appropriate throughout the year.

Establish class routines

Predictability in the classroom gives your children a sense of control and helps them feel safe. When there's an orderly flow in the day and they know what to expect, transitions from one lesson or activity to another become smoother. In addition, class routines reduce disruptive behavior, meaning you'll maximize instruction time. Also, your interactions with the children will be more pleasant when you're not correcting them constantly.

Consider drafting a classroom schedule before the school year starts. The first few weeks will require a lot of practice until the routines stick. Some children might even test the usual boundaries, but keep practicing and explaining your expectations because children ultimately thrive developmentally and academically when they know what's going on in the classroom.

Encourage peer scaffolding

Encouraging your children to help one another in learning is a good way to build community in the classroom. When a child who has mastered counting from 1 to 10 supports another who's struggling, the struggling child develops confidence and learns that their peers are supportive. These types of interactions develop into children voluntarily helping each other in class.

One way to encourage peer scaffolding is by using the " Ask Three Before Me " strategy. For example, a child struggling to open a jar comes to you for help. You tell the child to ask three other children first; if they can't help, they can return to you. This strategy encourages independence, confidence, and communication among the children.

Display the children's work

Although teacher-made and store-bought materials are nice to have in the classroom, ensure that most of the displays in your classroom are made by your children. Seeing their work displayed makes them feel important. You're telling them, "I value you" and "I value your work." Ensure that each child has work on display and that it's at the children's eye level so they can see it.

Children's work may include personal artwork, writing, charts, or group projects. You can also display family and pet photographs, especially at the beginning of the school year. Seeing their family members in class can make their transition into school easier. These photos also open conversation among the children about their families and pets.

Involve families

Building a classroom community is a difficult task without the involvement of the children's families. The family is a child's first community, so their family's participation in the classroom community is essential. Keep them in the loop about what's happening with their children in the classroom. Regular communication by email, video conferencing, or physical meetings gives everyone a complete picture of the child's developmental milestones and accomplishments.

By staying in communication regularly, teachers and families can work together to solve any issues as they arise. Let the families know they're welcome to take part in classroom activities. For example, they can teach an introductory cooking lesson, read a story, teach a skill or craft, or share about a cultural holiday. Imagine the pride a child will feel when their family is an active part of the classroom community.

Remember that some families won't be able to meet you during the week because of work commitments or their schedule doesn't allow it. However, that doesn't mean they can't monitor their child's activities. A tool like brightwheel's daily activity report feature will enable you to share real-time updates like milestones, photos, and videos to keep families updated on their child's day-to-day activities.

Be an active participant and role model

When building a classroom community, you're not just instructing. You're participating, and this participation encourages your children to participate too. Share your experiences and allow your children to see you as a person, not just their teacher. Share your feelings, admit your mistakes, and ask for help. When children see you as a learner, they'll feel like you understand them and find you more relatable.

Classroom community building activities

Building a classroom community takes intentional effort. Your daily classroom routines should include activities to help the children feel like they belong. Here are some activities to consider:

All About Me

This activity is excellent for the start of the school year, as it helps you get to know your class and helps the children get to know each other. However, you can use this activity all year long to encourage acceptance and respect for one another. All About Me activities celebrate each child: their race, culture, unique characteristics, abilities, and family.

Have each child draw a picture of their family and pets and allow them to talk about them with the class. You can also create an All About Me poster using a simple template to capture each child's primary details and interests, including their name, age, birthday, favorite color, favorite food, favorite animal, and favorite book.

Morning meetings

Morning meetings set the tone for the day and help children transition from home to school so they can settle in and feel like they're part of a community.

You can start each morning meeting by greeting and welcoming each child and having the children greet one another. Then you can sing a song like, If You're Happy and You Know It to get them excited about the day ahead. Next, discuss the day's schedule, and if you're using new tools or props for the day's activities, have them look at and touch the objects to get a feel of what's happening for the day. Then let them ask questions.

Kindness day

Choose one day of the week for this activity. You can call it Kindness Monday or Kindness Wednesday, for example. On this day, you can have the children sit in a circle and pass a ball or bean bag to each person in the circle. As each child passes the ball or bean bag to the person beside them, they compliment that person by saying what they like about that person or mentioning positive attributes about them. This activity teaches children how to be polite and show each other compassion. It also builds children's confidence and teaches them to appreciate the differences they see in others.

Morning affirmations

Morning affirmations aren't just for adults; they're also essential for children. They help children develop a growth mindset and change how they think about themselves. For example, affirmations like "I am strong," "I can do hard things," "I believe in myself," "I am nice to my friends," and "I have great ideas" will give children the confidence boost they need to engage in learning and socialize positively with their peers.

You can write out the affirmations and display them in the classroom so that the children can say them as a group as well as independently. When children repeat these affirmations regularly, their brains will take them in as facts.

Reciting affirmations also translates into how children talk to each other. For example, suppose a child feels defeated by an activity, saying they can't do it. In that case, another child may encourage them, telling them they can do it because their daily affirmations say they can.

Telephone game

Games are a fun way to build community. For example, communication games like the telephone game build a child's listening and thinking skills. Sit in a circle with the children. Then whisper a word, phrase, or sentence into the ear of the child sitting to your right and have them whisper it to the child next to them until it reaches the last child in the circle. The last child should say the word or phrase out loud so that everyone can hear how much it has changed.

Build a welcoming space for your preschoolers

Building a classroom community requires planning and commitment. Spending a week or two planning before the beginning of the school year will be time well spent. Choose strategies and activities that suit your program and your children. Ultimately, your children will thrive as you, the children, and their families work together to build a safe and positive learning environment together.

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Creating a Sense of Classroom Community in Your Preschool

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See why a classroom community is important in early childhood and learn how to build one in your program with practical strategies and activities.

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CCC Questionnaire Technical Report: Networking 

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CCC Questionnaire Technical Report: Networking 

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It's never too early to start thinking about your child's future. While the job market will change to accommodate new coming generations, some things will always stay the same - like the importance of networking.

Today, 88% of professionals consider networking to be crucial to a thriving career. Knowing this, you should never underestimate the power of connections. Sometimes, it's all about the people you know.

Networking Skills

However, networking does have the potential to pamper you with benefits to reap far outside the professional realm. Professionally connecting can teach you powerful communication and other soft skills that may cushion your social life comfortably. Now is the time to begin instilling the importance of networking into your child's growth mentality. This way, they can be comfortable enough to siege various networking opportunities productive for their future once entering college.

For example: by teaching your kids to be social now, they may be interested in non-conventional social activities, such as joining Greek life. Unbeknownst to most, Greek life can be an educationally enriching process for many. Having committees, meetings, and executive boards, members of fraternities and sororities take on many responsibilities and tasks teaching them great business.

Outside of this, Greek life organizations also give students the opportunity to improve on how they participate in teamwork, prioritize community service, and communicate. On top of that, students who were members of Greek organizations prove to be happier and more engaged once entering the workforce. In fact, 85% of Fortune 500 Executives are fraternity members.

Career Building

Whether your child plans to go to college or take up a trade, there are many ways to go about networking to connect them to future job opportunities. Take your child to attend job and career fairs, introducing them to your colleagues needing interns and shadowers, get them a mentor, or even helping them build a LinkedIn profile once of age.

There are also public service jobs in competitive career paths. For example, first responders are high stress positions that take unique skills, such as the police, firefighters, paramedics and 911 dispatchers. Leaning how to network with people already doing these jobs will greatly assist in the necessary research to determine what each of these careers involve before committing to the challenge.

Regardless of your approach, meeting people is a crucial value of higher education - and education overall. Prepare your children for their future of work while they're still obtaining an education. This way, they'll be ready for whatever the job market has to throw at them.

Here more information on ways to network below.

Social Networking

In this day and age, most of us think of social networking as what you do when you log on to your favorite social media app. That that really has more to do with how we connect with people on social media. Most of the time, it's for personal use. Platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn are often for business use as well. However, the idea of social networking for various purposes has been around for as long as humans walked on this earth.

Basically, a social network in the offline world is all of the people we are connected with in the world, whether it be friends, school friends, work colleagues, and organizations we may be part of. Even without computers, we have a network of those in our physical vicinity that we are all connected with.

As we've already explored in this article, if you want to find the right school, college, or job - it's beneficial to network with people that can help you in those areas. And the idea of leaning networking skills has more to do with personal interaction with individuals than impersonal connections on social media.

Connecting with others online can be part of teaching social networking skills, but it should not be regarded as being anywhere near as effective as expanding your social network people that you can talk to on the phone or meet with in person.

Watch this video to understand the basics of social networking.

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How To Teach Networking Skills | Education

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One of the most important elements of teaching is providing students with plenty of opportunities to actively engage in learning with their peers. This blog post covers my favorite cooperative learning strategies that I have used in my classroom. These activities can be used across all subjects and several grade levels (3-6+).

Bonus: I created handy cheat-sheets you can print out that detail all 5 strategies. Enter your email address into the form at the end of this post, and I will email them to you.

1. Expert Groups (AKA Jigsaw)

How it Works:

1. Group your students into four equal "Expert Groups" (e.g., Group A, Group B, etc.). These groups should be strategically organized in heterogeneous groups in regards to student ability. Each of these groups will cover a unique topic or have a unique task to accomplish. For example, you could divide a reading selection from a social studies or science textbook into four equal parts. The students in these groups are responsible for becoming "Experts" in their topic of study.

2. You will also need to think about how you will organize the "Numbered Groups" (e.g., Group 1, Group 2... etc.). Similar to the "Expert Groups," these groups should also be varied heterogeneously.

3. After the "Experts" have gathered to learn their assigned topics in-depth, they can be dispersed into numbered groups containing one "Expert" from each group. During this time, "Experts" will present to the other group members.

NOTE: The number of "Expert Groups" and "Numbered Groups" is totally flexible depending on the topics you are studying and the number of students in your class. I have used the strategy successfully with a class of 36 students (4 Expert Groups and 9 Numbered Groups).

Benefits:

2. Four Corners

How it Works:

1. Choose four aspects of a topic that your class is currently focusing on. For example, you can present a controversial statement or a question related to your topic of study.

2. Assign each of the following responses to a corner of your room: "Strongly Agree," "Agree," "Disagree," and "Strongly Disagree") related to the statement. You can also assign four possible answer choices to a question to each corner. Post these on chart paper in four different areas of your classroom. The opinions/answers can also be shown on the overhead in multiple-choice format, while each corner of the room is labeled as A, B, C, or D.

3. Present the topic and the four related aspects to the whole group and give the students some "think time."

4. Students can then choose a corner to discuss the topic. 5. Representatives from each corner can share what their respective groups discussed.

Benefits:

3. The Fish Bowl

How it Works:

1. Divide your class in half. One half will form the center circle, facing inward. The other half of the class will form the outer circle, facing inward as well.

2. The students in the inner circle will discuss a predetermined topic.

3. The outside circle will be listening to the discussion, making a note of interesting, new, or contradictory information. They are not allowed to say a word at this point.

4. The inner and outer circles can then switch positions and repeat the steps above.

Benefits:

4. Circle Chats

How it Works:

1. Divide your class in half. One half will create an inner circle; the other half will make up the outer circle.

2. Students in the outer circle can ask a question of the students in the inner circle. These questions can be self-selected by the students, or you can make your own question(s).

3. After a set period of time, the teacher signals, and the inner circle rotates and pairs up with a new student.

4. Once the group has completed a full rotation, the inside and outside circle trade positions and repeat the above steps.

Benefits:

5. Q & A Match-up

How it Works:

1. Create a set of questions and answers based on the topic your class is studying. Each question will be placed on a separate card, and each answer will be placed on a different card. You can make answer cards one color and all the question cards another color; this makes it easier for students to "match up" during the activity. If you are covering a vast topic (for instance, a chapter in a social studies or science text), you could easily make enough questions and answers cards so each student has a unique card. However, you can also make several copies of just a few questions and answers so that some students have duplicate cards; this works best when your topic is more focused (e.g., a lesson within a chapter).

2. Randomly distribute the question and answer cards to your students. Give them a few minutes to read their cards and think about what might be the corresponding answer or question that would match their assigned card.

3. Then allow the students to "mingle" as they try to "match up" with their correct question or answer.

4. Once students start matching up, I have them stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their corresponding card/partner along the perimeter of the room. Unmatched students are still floating around the center, looking for their counterparts.

5. Once all students have been matched up, each student can read his/her question and matching answer to the group. If the group feels that the match is incorrect, then the students can do a little reshuffling to find a better fit.

Benefits:

If you want a printable version of these strategies, complete the form below, and I'll send it right over to you

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Cooperative Learning Strategies * Teacher Thrive

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One of the most important elements of teaching is providing students with plenty of opportunities to actively engage in learning with their peers. This blog post covers my favorite cooperative learning strategies that I have used in my classroom. These activities can be used across all subjects and several grade levels (3-6+).

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http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/think-pair-share/

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Taking Action in High School Through Networking

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Taking Action in High School Through Networking

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William Beguhn: Taking action in high school through networking | TED Talk

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You have passions, as does everybody. But what do you do with them? What’s the secret to taking your hobby to the next level, meeting the professionals in the hobby, and taking the next step towards making it your career? The answer is networking. High school students are never taught what networking is, or how to do it. High School junior Liam Beguhn shares how his passion for natural ecosystems has been amplified through networking, and give the simple, yet extremely effective, tips on how to achieve your dreams.

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The 3 Bones of Networking for Student Success

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The 3 Bones of Networking for Student Success

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The 3 Bones of Networking for Student Success | Isaac Serwanga | TEDxCSUS

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Networking Tips for High School Students: How to Grow Your Network

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Networking Tips for High School Students: How to Grow Your Network

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Networking Tips for High School Students: How to Grow Your Network

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Learn how to make the most of your high school years by networking. These tips will help you grow your professional network and set yourself up for future success.

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Guiding Students to Set Up Professional Networks to Prepare for the Future

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Guiding Students to Set Up Professional Networks to Prepare for the Future

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Guiding Students to Set Up Professional Networks to Prepare for the Future

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Students can make connections with people who will help them learn about professions they want to pursue—all before leaving school.

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Professional networking for students - Pick Dave's Brain

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Welcome to the Workforce Recruitment Program (WRP)

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The WRP is a recruitment and referral program that connects federal and private sector employers nationwide with highly motivated college students and recent graduates with disabilities who are eager to prove their abilities in the workplace through summer or permanent jobs.

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LinkedIn Profile Tips for High School Students

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LinkedIn Profile Tips for High School Students

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LinkedIn Profile Tips for High School Students

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Is high school too early to set up a LinkedIn profile? College students know that a presence on LinkedIn will help them find and apply for jobs. But most high school students are years away from a full-time job search.

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Kids Online: A New Research Agenda for Understanding Social Networking Forums

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Kids Online: A New Research Agenda for Understanding Social Networking Forums

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A mentor is someone whose life or work you value and admire, and whom you think might be a good guide. Learn the steps to choose the right mentor for you!

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Friends Help Each Other (Song) | PBS KIDS

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Friends Help Each Other (Song) | PBS KIDS

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DANIEL TIGER'S NEIGHBORHOOD | Friends Help Each Other (Song) | PBS KIDS

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Building Authentic Relationships with Students

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Building Authentic Relationships with Students

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Building Authentic Relationships With Students

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Borrowing some ideas from psychology can help forge strong relationships with high school students, improve their academic performance, and promote a sense of belonging.

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We brighten the lives of women across the world

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The mission of Dress for Success is to empower women to achieve economic independence by providing a network of support, professional attire and the development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.