Latest / New Teacher Talk / Ep 152: From Day One to Done Right: Building Student Connections and Classroom Success

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Ep 152: From Day One to Done Right: Building Student Connections and Classroom Success · New Teacher Talk

Welcome to the latest episode of New Teacher Talk where we
discuss issues that are important to aspiring and early
career educators.
Whether you are in a rural, suburban, or urban setting,
we are here to provide insights, advice,
and support to help you thrive in your teaching journey.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to New Teacher Talk.
My name is Tom Rocco,
and I am a middle school physical education teacher for
grades six through eight.
My name is Mike Gillespie.
I am also a PE teacher grades five through eight.
Today,
Tom and I are gonna talk to you about getting to know your
students, preparation, organization, and communication.
We are going to present these topics to you in a manner
that will, hopefully,
maximize the student learning outcomes and growth in your
classroom.
So let's get started.
Go ahead, Mike.
Knock 'um off their sacks.
Thanks Tom.
We're going to start off with getting to know your
students.
So what I've noticed is that in different school
environments this job could be easier or harder.
If you have a class of 50 kids it's going to be a lot
harder to get to know your students than it is for 25 kids.
So I think the environment that you are in is going to
affect how hard you have to work at this.
One thing that I've used in both situations I've taught in
a 50 person classroom and a 25 is some getting to know you
surveys at the beginning of the year.
You can use your digital platform like Canvas or Schoology
and give the students some questions that will help you get
to know them.
Some personal questions outside of school.
You can also add a personal question to exit slips that are
at the end of your lessons.
Maybe you ask three to questions about what they learn that
day in class and then you add a personal question in.
Also something I think that would benefit you and the kids
is to be involved.
I understand as a new teacher it can be overwhelming,
but you do not need to do everything.
Maybe you work the lunchroom.
Maybe you sub in the lunchroom.
Maybe you just go to their games or go to their plays.
You coach a sport or you run a club.
You don't have to be at everything, d
o everything but be involved will help you get to know your
students.
That was awesome, Mike.
I am ready to join a club, I'm ready to coach a club,
I'm ready to run through a brick wall for you.
But while Mike was talking about things that were a little
bit more formal,
I'm gonna talk about one that I think is an informal way to
go ahead and get to know your students a lot better as well
as get your students comfortable with knowing you.
And that's just through casual conversations.
I noticed that students are very receptive to receiving a
high five.
You getting to know their first name and calling them by
their first name, they're like, wow, Mr.
Rocco really knows my first name.
How does he know my first name?
So those are the little things, small things,
those casual conversations can go a long way.
Asking them questions as well, like how was your weekend?
How was your summer?
What did you do?
Those things can go a long way in helping you build solid,
stronger relationships with those students.
In addition to that,
one other thing that I do is a parent survey.
Parent survey gives me a little bit of a look into the
student's learning style.
Are they an auditory learner?
Are they a visual learner?
Are they a kinesthetic learner?
In the world of physical education,
we tend to lean towards our students being kinesthetic
learners that are learning while doing the activities and
participating in the different lessons that are focused on
fitness or sport related skills.
So we are going to move along and Mike,
it's going to lead us off on our next section.
Go ahead, Mike.
Before we do that, I like your family surveys, Rocco,
or Tom.
Thank you for that.
Preparation is next.
Something that I think we should all know or all know
before we start our lessons or our school year is we have
to know the basics.
Where are we teaching?
What are we teaching?
How long are we teaching?
What equipment do I have to teach?
That is a very good place to start before your school year
or each unit you are gonna do.
You need to know the basics.
Also, Tom and I were talking about planning lessons.
We brought up the kind of the backwards design.
We have a big objective for the unit and we work our way
backwards to start off each unit.
I also do not wanna overwhelm myself with planning every
day for two months.
So I plan week by week just in case something like they're
gonna use the gym for pictures comes up or they're gonna
use the fitness room for the school play practice.
Things come up so I don't plan too far ahead because I have
to switch up as I go.
Also,
something to have is one to two fallback plans ready to go
that you can substitute throughout the day or in the actual
lesson.
The mentorship program at your school or having a trusted
adult or teacher that you can bounce ideas off of also will
help you prepare for your school day.
Tom, what do you have to offer on this?
Oh, Mike, I think you bring up a great point.
There's always going to be a lot of adversity when you are
teaching.
And being prepared for that adversity when it happens,
whether it be difficult kids or difficult,
your space not being used,
it's important to not get overwhelmed or overstressed or
have anxiety about those situations.
Having a good,
solid lesson plan will minimize a lot of your adversity.
Having a good organization,
which we will talk about shortly,
is important to minimizing those out of control sessions or
those out of control kids where you're having behavioral
issues or kids are not participating or you're losing
control of your classroom.
So being prepared and using strategies like having highly
engaged lessons that are well thought out,
that you're using information from the Google Forms that
where you were learning about your student's type of
learning, as well as their interests,
will allow you to create a highly engaged lesson that will
hopefully minimize the adversity that you will see from
your kids in your classroom.
In addition to that, as far as lesson planning goes,
it's very important to be very knowledgeable about your
subject.
If you're not knowledgeable about your subject,
you're not going to be confident in how you present that
lesson.
So being confident and speaking confident goes a long way
in getting the kids interested,
as well as them respecting you as a teacher and in what you
are trying to teach them.
Again, Mike mentioned the backward design process.
The backward design process is great.
We get a learning standard.
We have a national standard.
We have an Illinois state standard.
We are going to make sure that we are providing the steps
in getting those students to meet and reach those standards
by the end of our lessons and the end of our unit.
And Mike is now going to bring us into...
Organization!
Oh, I love organization, Mike.
You are super organized.
To start off with organization,
I think the beginning of the school year,
you need to set routines and rules for your classroom.
What is it gonna look like for each day that the students
come in?
For example, the kids come in, and I stole this from Tom,
is they come in and they look at the whiteboard and they
have a instant warmup, something to do right away.
Maybe for your classroom,
you have an icebreaker or a instant activity,
all set up ready for them to go.
From there, we go into the objectives.
I tell a bad dad joke.
Then we get into the class, we do our lesson,
we do our activity.
Then we end the class with a exit slip or a conversation.
So that is set at the beginning of the year.
Those are the routines that they know,
that every class is pretty much gonna follow.
They know what the bathroom routines are,
if they need to get water, if they hurt themselves.
So setting those rules and routines will help organization
at the beginning of the year.
Also,
something that I like to use is a to-do list at the beginning
of the week.
It just tells me and reminds me throughout the week,
what day I should do what, so I don't have to stress.
I have my list that I can always go back to.
Thank you, Mike, for those wonderful tips on organization.
A lot of the things Mike just mentioned are things that I'm
doing in my class as well.
One thing I would like to add is we like to do in my class
a student responsibilities list,
where I rotate responsibilities for each student for each
week.
To give you an example,
we have a student that's in charge of attendance.
We have equipment that needs to be put out,
equipment that needs to be collected.
And I'm using probably somewhere between four to six
students per week to handle those tasks.
What I've found is during those weeks,
those students come in and they are very motivated to take
on those responsibilities,
and they like the responsibility of those tasks.
So that is one thing to consider when trying to organize
your classroom and giving your students an opportunity to
be a part of that organization.
And we are now ready to move on to our final topic.
Communication!
Communication with students and with families.
We're gonna talk about something that I would highly
recommend that you do is set up a weekly newsletter or
email to families.
Rocco was talking at the beginning of the podcast about
family surveys.
So this is kind of another layer of communication with
those families.
In that newsletter,
you can tell a little bit about yourself,
make it more of a conversation,
more of a back and forth with the family.
You can tell them what they are going to do during the
week, if there's anything special during the week,
they need to know.
The communication home is only going to help parents feel
part of your classroom and part of your class.
On the kids side,
you can utilize your digital system like Canvas or
Schoology to communicate with kids throughout the day,
throughout the week about what's going on in class,
what they'll need,
just some ways you can reach out to students and families.
Thank you for that, Mike.
That is awesome.
That actually is going to lead me right into talking about
Canvas as well.
And one thing that I do is I try to provide feedback on
each of my lessons by offering students an opportunity to
demonstrate understanding of each lesson through exit
slips.
And a lot of times when they answer the questions to those
exit slips,
I will provide specific feedback on how and what they
performed or did during that lesson,
which parents have access to.
So as a parent,
they can go in and look at their child's responses and see
what they are learning during the week.
It's also a great way for students and parents to go in and
see our weekly lessons for that week and PE in my class,
because they are all posted at the beginning of the week.
Lastly, I try to do,
especially at the beginning of the year,
is getting some quick,
positive phone calls and positive emails home.
I'm noticing great growth in a student or I'm noticing some
students that are maybe had a little bit of a difficult
start, but are starting to turn it around.
I want to make sure that I reach home,
and they get that positive reinforcement from the home that
they are on the right track and to continue doing those
things.
In addition to that,
I have found that it builds strong relationships with the
parents at home.
It gets me off on the right foot.
You know, if something negative does come up along the way,
at least I have established a little bit of a positive
relationship at the beginning of the year with those
families so that later on maybe those negative situations
don't really blow up into larger issues where I am having
to deal with something a little bit more serious.
So again,
positive communication early and often can go a long way
with your classrooms.
You know a strategy for that, Tom,
could be you set every Friday you're going to send one or
two emails home for each class.
It's not overwhelming,
it's just one or two emails a class.
By the end of the school year,
you've probably hit every kid in your class.
That is a great strategy,
one that I am currently writing down on this paper to be a
better teacher for next year.
Thank you.
Well, I'm glad I can help you.
And I hope that our new teacher talk podcast will help your
new teachers with one or two things you can take away and
use right away.
And good luck and I hope that you found this interesting
and engaging and will help you with your upcoming school
year.
That's a wrap on today's New Teacher Talk.
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