Waking Up From Winter Break: How These Educators Engage Students After the Holidays
From all of us at Flocabulary, Happy 2016! We’re pumped for another year of working with awesome educators to inspire students. But whether you’re in a Brooklyn office or the back of an ELA classroom, getting into the swing of things after the holidays can be tricky!
We chatted with some educators in the Flocabulary community about the best way to re-engage students after winter break, and a clear theme emerged: culture-building. Here are four ways to create a strong, positive culture in your classroom after break, inspired by these educators.
Aim to inspire
Who doesn’t love a little feel-good inspiration as we aspire to accomplish new goals in the year ahead? Here’s how Andrea Runnels, fifth grade teacher at Kanoheda Elementary in Georgia, planned to pump up students for 2016: “I love using Kid President as a positive role model for my students. I plan to show his ‘Guide to Being Awesome’ video. Then we will make a plan to be awesome! I have picked a single word –‘One Little Word’– to focus on as my theme for this year, and I’m going to have my students do the same. They’ll create a bulletin board for this word instead of the traditional resolutions. This way, I can refer to each child’s word to redirect and guide their learning and character development for the rest of the year. I love Flocabulary’s Goal Setting video and plan to show that, too, and have my students write about a specific academic goal for the rest of the year.”
