School Caring Adults
School Community Strategies
School Community Strategies are whole-school tips, routines, and rituals that can be implemented by school leaders and educators. Use these strategies as often as you’d like to build school community, create strong peer to peer and peer to educator relationships, and increase school belonging.
Each School Community Strategy can be implemented in 5-10 minutes.
Strategies and Lessons
Making Caring Common Strategies are sets of lessons on particular social-emotional learning topics to build students’ moral capacities. Strategies shared focus on building school community, empathy and connection amongst students.
Each strategy contains five lessons, ranging from 15-35 minutes each.
Games
Making Caring Common Games are quick, energizing activities focused on community-building, listening and empathy skills. Games can be played with small or large groups as well as whole classrooms and can be facilitated by all educators.
Games range from 5-10 minutes each and can be used to begin class, transition between lessons or as a break during a lesson.
School Community Strategies
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Class Banking Time
Grades: K-12
Recommended time: 5 minutes each day
Summary: Informal conversations to build relationships, banked over time could add up to over 10 hours of time each semester dedicated to getting to know your students and creating a strong community.
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Community Circle
Grades: K-12
Recommended Time: 5 minutes per day; once a day or once a week
Summary: Community Circles support building a strong classroom community based on equality, trust and collaboration. When done regularly, community circles can be a calming, reliable source of connection in the classroom where students feel seen and heard. In a community circle, the teacher and students arrange their chairs into a circle facing towards each other.
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Gratitude Ritual
Grades: K-12
Recommended Time: 10 minutes per week
Summary: Students who practice feeling and expressing gratitude show higher levels of positive emotions, generosity, and compassion and lower levels of loneliness and isolation. Once a week, prompt your class to write down either in a journal that they’ll keep or on a notecard to submit to you three things they are grateful for.
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Thumbs Up
Grades: K-12
Recommended Time: 5 minutes at the beginning or end of a school day
Summary: A quick emotions check-in with students can help them feel heard in the classroom as well as give teachers the opportunity to see which students may need additional support. In Thumbs Up, the teacher asks students to rate how they are doing by showing either a thumbs up, in the middle, or thumbs down. After taking the temperature check, the teacher can open up the discussion for students to share anything they need help with this week as well as positive events.
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Two-by-Ten
Grades: K-12
Recommended Time: 2 minutes every day for 10 days
Summary: Two-by-Ten can help school adults focus and segment the large task of building strong relationships with every student. Administrators, staff, or teachers spend two minutes each day for ten days talking to a single student with the purpose of getting to know them.
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Weekly Lunch Meetings
Grades: K-12
Recommended Time: one lunch period per week for school leaders
Summary: Seeking feedback from students and ensuring students feel known by school leaders are important steps in building a caring school environment. During weekly lunch meetings, school leaders invite a small group of students to share lunch in their office or via a video call. It is key that these conversations include all students rather than being a reward for top academic performers. If possible, all students should be invited at least once. Depending on the size of the school, consider having more than one school leader participate with the goal of meeting with each student as often as time allows.
Strategies and Lessons
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Everyday Caring
Grades 6-12
Students will reflect on and discuss how to encourage more kindness and caring, for themselves and others, at their school and beyond. They will practice regular intentional acts so they become routine and normalized parts of students’ lives. By reporting back, students will learn about each other’s experiences and can use them as sources of inspiration. The activity encourages a variety of kind and caring acts from classroom community care to self-care.
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Listening Deeply
Grades 6-12
In the Listening Deeply strategy, students will learn and practice three deep listening skills: body language, focus, and empathy. In a series of lessons with different conversation starters, they will practice being active, authentic listeners with a partner– listening to make the speaker feel heard without reciprocating in the conversation. Speakers will also get more comfortable sharing about themselves and expressing feelings. Through the listening exercises, students will learn and come to value showing engagement when someone is speaking, understand people’s thoughts and feelings, and make others feel heard.
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Humans of Your School
Grades 6-12
Inspired by the “Humans of New York” series, this strategy helps students learn about the power of portraits and the importance of expressing vulnerability when sharing about oneself and learning about others. Humans of Your School provides students with opportunities to learn interviewing skills, connect with those different from them, understand varying perspectives, and appreciate differences while finding commonalities.
Games
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Build-it Challenge
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Teamwork
Overview: The following game can be used regularly with students to promote teamwork and communication. Teachers might choose to use it at the start of each class or during a transition between lessons. -
Cheers
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Interpersonal Activities
Overview: The following game can be used regularly with students to build a foundation for the practice and habit of empathy. Teachers might choose to use it at the beginning of each class or during a transition between lessons mid-class. -
Fill-in-the-Blank Bingo
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Interpersonal Activities
Overview: The following game can be used with students at the beginning of a new year or class to increase peer connection and belonging, as well as build the foundation for the practice and habit of building empathy. -
Group Juggle
Grades: 4-12
Game Type: Movement
Overview: The following game can be used regularly to energize students while promoting classroom bonding, listening and attention skills. Teachers might choose to use it during a transition between lessons or as a break during a lesson. -
Listening Deeply
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Interpersonal Activities
Overview: The following game can be used regularly with students to practice active listening and empathy while building classroom community and peer connection. Teachers might choose to use it at the beginning of each class or during a transition between lessons.
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Mix-It-Up Days
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Movement Activities
Overview: The following game can be used regularly with students to build a foundation for the practice and habit of empathy. Teachers might choose to use it at the beginning of each class or during a transition between lessons mid-class.
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Newsball
Grades: 3-12
Game Type: Interpersonal Activities
Overview: The following game can be used regularly with students to build a foundation for the practice and habit of empathy and active listening, while building classroom community. Teachers might choose to use it at the beginning or end of class once a week. -
Say it with an Emoji
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Introspective Activities
Overview: The following game can be used regularly with students to build a foundation for the practice and habit of empathy. Teachers might choose to use it at the beginning of each class or during a transition between lessons mid-class. -
School Community Scavenger Hunt
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Developing empathy; asking questions; deep listening
Overview: The following game can be used regularly with students to practice building empathy and increase social connections at school. Teachers and schools might choose to use it as a school-wide community-building practice at the beginning of the year. -
Tapping Game
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Movement activities
Overview: The following game can be used regularly with students to build a foundation for the practice and habit of empathy. Teachers might choose to use it at the beginning of each class or during a transition between lessons mid-class. -
Tele-strations
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Interpersonal Activities
Overview: The following game can be used regularly with students to promote peer connections and a positive classroom community. Teachers might choose to use it at the beginning of class or during a transition between lessons mid-class. -
This or That
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Movement Activities
Overview: The following game can be used regularly with students to build a foundation for the practice and habit of active listening, perspective sharing, and empathy. Teachers might choose to use it at the beginning of each class or during a transition between lessons mid-class. -
Today's Tweet
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Transition Activities
Overview: The following game can be used regularly with students to build a foundation for the practice and habit of empathy. Teachers might choose to use it at the beginning of each class or during a transition between lessons mid-class. -
Yes/No/Maybe
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Movement Activities
Overview: The following game can be used regularly with students to build a foundation for the practice and habit of empathy. Teachers might choose to use it at the beginning of each class or during a transition between lessons mid-class. -
ZipZapZoom
Grades: 6-12
Game Type: Movement Activities
Overview: The following game can be used regularly to energize students while promoting classroom bonding, listening and attention skills. Teachers might choose to use it during a transition between lessons or as a break during a lesson.