Building Community & Connecting with the Families in Your Classroom

How do you learn about the families of the students who are in your classroom? Learning about the students and their families helps you make connections to the curriculum and most importantly learn about the learners you are working with for the year.

Last night in the literacy coaching class I teach, we were discussing different ways of including families into the classroom. One of the students invites the parents in to talk about their jobs and what is involved in their daily work. He has also invited parents in to discuss their backgrounds and culture. He continued and shared how it allows the parents to speak to the students and learn more about all of the children in the classroom and it is a special experience for the kids.

Here are a couple ideas I had for the students to try out and hopefully use with their students:

Zip Code Poem

Everyone has a particular connection to and view of their community and these differ from person to person. In order to learn how the students view their community, you can invite them to write a zip code poem. A former student shared this idea with me – she learned about it in a professional development workshop.

Poetry allows you to describe your own reality and connect with yourself. In this activity, students use their zip code to inspire a poem about the place where they live. What you do is you write your zip code vertically on the paper – like an acrostic poem. Each digit of your zip code determines the number of words that you can use in that specific line. The number zero is the “wild card” so tell your students they can use as many words for zero as they want! Here’s an example!  

1  Park

2  Fun Playgrounds

3  Ice Cream Shops

4  Elementary Schools with Children

5  Fun to be with Neighbors

A Community Photo! The Neighborhood Park and Playground!

Capture Your Community in a Photograph

Pictures are wonderful resources in the classroom! I asked each of my students to take a photo of something in their community that was meaningful or important to them. All they had to do was bring in the picture – nothing else. During class, I asked them to share the photos with each other. I was amazed by all the different images that were brought into class. Some students brought in pictures of restaurants, another student brought in a photo of a memorial, one came with a picture of the beach. I gave them the opportunity to discuss and share their pictures and the stories behind their photos. The stories were amazing! I learned even more about the students who are in my class from what they shared.

After giving them time to share with each other, I asked them to write about their photograph and why this particular place in their community is important or meaningful to them. They could write in any format that worked for them. I had modeled how I approached the writing so that they had an example as a starting point.

 Need More Scaffolding?

If your students need more support before working on their own writing about what is important to them in their community, you can do a shared writing. You and the students can a part of the school community. Once you have a picture selected, you can ask the students to share their thoughts and ideas about the photograph. As they share their ideas, you can do the physical writing. This helps the students generate ideas and takes away the physical task of writing that may be more challenging for students. This allows all levels of support: you have modeled your own photograph and writing (I do), you and the students write together about a photograph (we do), and then once they are ready, the students can write about their own photography (you do).