Yurchis,+Teresa,+Classroom+Community+Building

= Introduction of Student: = **Something I would like you to know about me:** I like to play the ukulele and write songs. I have always wanted to be in a band! I think music is one of the most important ways of bringing people together and creating peace in the world. **My education & career goals:** I was raised and schooled in Portland, Oregon. I moved to Ashland four years ago to attend SOU. I am very happy about the choice I made to come here! I started as a theater major, and then discovered teaching. I could not be happier about the switch I made to become an elementary education major. After I graduate from college I would like to travel around the world and teach young students. I would also like to teach 1st and 2nd grade in Portland. Later on in my life I would like to open my own preschool. **What brings me joy?:** I love to dance, laugh, make art, and play with my friends and loved ones. I love games, singing songs, being outside, eating food, and cooking. Making music with other people brings me endless amounts of joy. Volunteering and being with elementary school students brings me joy. My grandmother lives in Ashland, and spending time with her always brings me joy! Traveling and the sunshine brings some of the best joy in my life. And glitter, stickers, and fairies bring me joy too! **What is my greatest fear about being a teacher?:** One of my greatest fears about being a teacher is being able to sincerely connect with each of my students and making sure each student is getting the attention and support he or she needs. **Did I ever experience a time when something was extremely difficult to learn? Explain that time and //how it made me feel//. How might this piece of my history help me connect to students with learning differences?:** Learning math and science has always been a struggle for me. Sometimes concepts in math and science are hard for me to wrap my brain around, which lead to extreme frustrations and learning difficulties. The math courses I took for the elementary education program led me to the math tutoring center for hours on end, and many days I left still feeling confused and frustrated about the concepts. During my math class I felt anxious and frustrated a lot of the time. However once I understood a new concept I felt overjoyed and proud of myself. This piece of history will help me connect to students with learning differences because I will be able to be patient with each student and understand that it takes many different explanations in order for everyone to understand something. Knowing that patience, frustration, and persistence can lead to understanding and happiness will help me encourage my students. **What do I want to gain from this course?:** I would like to learn ways to include every type of student in my classroom. I would like to better understand different types of exceptionalities and be able to practice strategies of inclusion. I would like to gain knowledge about IEPs and learn about new resources and activities. I would like to become more confident interacting with students who have exceptionalities.

Introduction of topic:
The feeling of inclusion is one I hope every human being will experience during his or her life. Being included in a community can help with self-confidence, social skills, life skills, and academia. When everyone is accepted in a classroom, learning and sharing can easily take place. I choose to research classroom community building because I believe creating a safe cooperative learning environment is the key to having successful and happy students. I believe working together is the best way to work. I want my students to help each other build the classroom community they want and work as a team to help the community function. As a teacher I will model respect, positivity, and proper problem solving skills. As a whole my students and I will build a new and authentic classroom community every year.
 * Classroom Community Building: **

**Top Five Things I Learned:**

 * 1) A central concern for 6 to 8 years olds is acceptance and relationships with peers.
 * 2) It is important to initiate conversations about making and keeping friends.
 * 3) It is important to have daily class meetings to discuss students ideas and go over group cohesion.
 * 4) Even dismissal time should be a time to model the behaviors that you want children to learn.
 * 5) Verbalizing children's actions help them understand and be more conscious of themselves and what they are doing.

Resources:

 * Top Resource!**
 * Building a Classroom Community - Teaching Strategies, Inc. From: [|Building a Class Community]

__Rating: 5 out of 5 stars__ This website is a chapter from a book called //Building the Primary Classroom//. It is rich with information about why building a classroom community is important and about ways to go about building a classroom community. It includes activities and ideas for primary classrooms from planning for the first day in the classroom, to using the bathroom, to greetings and goodbyes, to promoting positive friendships. This website discusses classroom meetings in great depth. It also discusses collaboration and problem solving extensively. This site is very helpful because it covers every aspect of classroom community building in a well laid out manner. I can see myself using ideas from this website as a teacher in the future and I think this website is going to be helpful to all future teachers!


 * 1.**
 * Teaching Tolerance - Classroom Community Building. From: [|Teaching tolerance activities]

__Rating: 4 out of 5 stars__ This website has many links to activities teachers can use in their classroom to create a community. It has different links to lessons for different grade levels, but some of the links are not directly related to classroom community building. There is a big focus on acceptance activities that have to do with gender and race, which is key to creating a caring classroom community. I like that they split up the activities for grade level, and give key words to help categorize the lessons. I would definitely use this website for classroom ideas!


 * 2.**
 * Youtube video, //Building a Culture for Learning,// 2011. From: [|Classroom Culture]

__Rating: 5 out of 5 stars__ This video is about creating a caring school community. It is short, however the information is valuable. It talks about the importance of every student having a sense of belonging, a sense of voice, and a sense of value in the school and classroom community. It also discusses the importance of honesty. Since it is so short, I would suggest everyone watching it to become even more inspired to create a trusting community in school!


 * 3.**
 * Hittie, Mishael, 2000. //Building Community in the Classroom.// From: [|Building Community]

__Rating: 4 out of 5 stars__ This website explains all of the important steps to creating a classroom community. It has helpful information but does not go into depth in many of the areas it discusses. For example it has one sentence for what to do during classroom transitions, and one sentence for how students should line up. It has more in depth information about friendships, working together, and leadership. This website also has a nice chart at the end that addresses the multiple intelligences but I am not clear on how it directly relates to building a classroom community.


 * 4.**
 * Church, Ellen, 2003. //Building Community in the Classroom.// From: [|Scholastic]

__Rating: 4 out of 5 stars__ This website is geared towards preschool to 2nd grade classrooms. A big focus of the article is that the teacher is the main component to creating a good classroom community along with celebrating each person as an individual. Various topics are addressed including things like creating trust and a warm environment. Although the topics are discussed in brief paragraphs, they are packed with useful information.


 * 5.**
 * Welch, Kim, 2007. //Collaborative Learning.// From: [|Collaborative Learning]

__Rating: 4 out of 5 stars__ This is a website jam packed with ideas for new teachers. If you click on "what to do on the first day," with the intention of finding out some ice breakers, it comes up with not only ice breakers, but with information on things like writing a syllabus and creating a lesson plan. The ideas for ice breakers are fun and ones I could see using in my own classroom. However there are links to more websites with ice breakers at the end of the page and none of the links I clicked on worked. If you stay on the first page of the website you can read about collaborative learning and neat collaborative activities to help build a classroom community.


 * 6.**
 * Youtube video, //Students being excluded: problem solving in a class meeting//, 2011. From: [|Problem Solving]

__Rating: 4 out of 5 stars__ This video models good classroom meeting techniques and displays a helpful discussion amongst young students about inclusion. The kids in this video have telling conversations with partners and work out problems with their partner and as a whole class. The teacher in this video reviews their classroom meeting rules and goes over the signals they have as a class for being ready. This is a little lengthy, however it shows a community classroom in the works!


 * 7.**
 * University of Missouri, 2006. From: [|Activities, games and lesson plans!]

__Rating: 5 out of 5 stars__ This website has over 20 links to suggestions of activities, games, and lesson plans for team building in grades 1-6. I like this page because it connected me to many new sources for ideas I had never thought of before for team building activities. Each link has a brief description underneath it to describe what you are about to click on. Some of my favorite ideas from the website are creating Me Shirts and making a classroom quilt. There are good ideas for team building games and directions to most of the activities are short and easy to follow.


 * 8.**
 * Ellis, Ken, 2003. From: [|School Community]

__Rating: 5 out of 5 stars__ This video is about an elementary school in downtown Phoenix that is flourishing thanks to the support from community, families, and the school committee. This school recognizes all kinds of learning and is based on a flexible design that fosters cooperative learning. This video focuses more on the school as a whole community, but it is important to have a cohesive whole school community in order to help build individual classroom communities. This is a wonderful representation of how to involve community in schools and recognize each student's unique learning style.