How To Create A Positive And Supportive Culture In Classroom Communities

September 20, 2022

“Students don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” – John Maxwell

The importance of how we set up the culture in classroom community cannot be overstated. As teachers, it’s our job to create a classroom culture where students feel welcomed, safe, and recognized. We can’t begin to teach them academics without addressing these important classroom community topics first.

Read on for practical ideas you can start today to create a supportive culture in classroom environments!

Want ready-made materials to help build a positive classroom community? Check out my Classroom Community MegaBundle resource.

back to school crafts that can build classroom community

What Is Classroom Culture?

Our classroom culture is the environment we create for students. This means how we treat them as people, not just as learners. But what goes into creating a positive classroom community?

First and foremost, you want your students to feel safe. Students should feel like school is a place where they will be respected and treated with kindness.
You also want your students to feel seen. Your students come from different backgrounds, and it’s important that the books, images, and activities you choose reflect those backgrounds.
Students need to practice social skills. The more you explicitly teach social emotional learning in your day, the more students will pick up on these important skills.
It’s so important for your students to feel like they can succeed. You can teach your students to handle challenges, build up resilience, and practice patience while they learn.

SAFE: How Students Treat Each Other

How students treat one another says a lot about your classroom culture. To create a kindness culture in classroom environments, kindness must be talked about and modeled on a daily basis.

There are lots of ways to talk about kindness, including children’s books, classroom activities, and daily conversations. Here are a few of my favorite ways to do that. (For even more ideas, check out my blog post on doing a Week of Kindness.)

WOW Word Wall

We love our WOW Word Wall! Every day after recess, I spend 5-10 minutes acknowledging students who showed any of our WOW words that day. I also let students acknowledge each other. Students get to put a butterfly up under the word they were acknowledged for. This practice helps so much in building a classroom culture of kindness and inclusion. (Grab this resource here!)

Be A Bucket Filler

I absolutely LOVE the Bucket Filling books for talking about kindness and empathy. How To Be A Bucket Filler and How Full Is Your Bucket are both wonderful books to have for your classroom. They teach children about empathy and kindness in such a relatable and clear way! (This anchor chart is part of this resource!)

Notes to Each Other

This is such a fun way to encourage students to create an environment of support and positivity. Hand out cute notes that children can write to each other to share something great about that classmate. This spreads such goodwill among students. Note, I definitely recommend screening all the notes before giving them to the recipient! (These notes are included in this resource!)

SEEN: Inclusivity and Diversity

Celebrating student identities and culture in the classroom is so important to helping them feel valued. I love making diversity and inclusivity a part of my classroom community each year. Here are some ways you can start to do that.

Windows and Mirrors Through Read Alouds

When I heard the “Windows and Mirrors” idea from Emily Styles, I instantly resonated with it. This is the idea that students need to hear stories and see examples of “mirrors” – characters that look like them and relate to their experiences. But they also need to be exposed to “windows” – a glimpse into the experience and world of those who are different from them. As we select read alouds and classroom library books for our students, we want to make sure we’re providing all students with a mix of both kinds of stories.

Celebrating Holidays Around the World

I absolutely love getting students involved in sharing about the different holidays they celebrate with their families. At the beginning of the year, I send a questionnaire home to families to get to know them and their child. Part of it includes questions about what holidays they celebrate and if they would be interested in sharing about those holidays with the class.

I also created materials for students to learn about Winter Holidays celebrated around the world and New Year’s celebrations around the world. Kids love holidays, and so learning about these was extra fun for them! (Check out these resources here.)

Plus, Ihave a whole blog post on more fun winter holiday activities to do with your students.

Celebrating Names

Celebrating students’ names at the beginning of the year is a great way to set the tone for inclusivity. There are so many great read aloud books about children with unique and beautiful names (see some of my favorites here). This anchor chart is a fun activity you can do after reading a few of those books to help children love their own name, and to make sure that everyone’s name is accepted and celebrated in your classroom. (Snag this anchor chart here.)

SOCIAL SKILLS: Weaving in Social Emotional Learning

Social emotional learning is a core part of our classroom community. Especially in primary grades, teaching students basic social skills is so important to weave into every day learning. In fact, students need explicit teaching of skills like self-regulation, communication, and setting boundaries. It’s important to provide times to talk about these skills and ways to practice them.

(For more ideas about social skills in the classroom, read the full blog post here.)

Puppets and Role Playing

I love using puppets to showcase social emotional skills that we are practicing. Here are a couple ways I like to use them to help us build community in classroom relations:

Have a designated puppet who comes to talk to the class about these issues. Maybe, they read them special books about friendships, rules, etc. Or, they ask the class for advice about relatable social situations you create for the puppet.
Have a couple puppets act out social scenarios that you see happen in your classroom. Then, ask the class for their ideas of what the puppets should do to fix the situation.

Self-Regulation Practice

the importance of social emotional learning

Teaching students to self-regulate is a hugely important skill. Not only will this help children throughout their lives, but it will help your classroom culture to run smoothly. Creating and teaching specific techniques that students can use in the classroom to calm themselves down can help create good habits for students in the long run. (Get this activity here!)

Feelings

Helping students identify their feelings can be so helpful to deescalate melt-downs and prevent outbursts. This fun craft is perfect for helping students practice this skill. (Grab this resources here!)

SUCCESS: Growth Mindset For Success

When I discovered growth mindset, I knew I wanted to weave it into our culture of classroom learning. Growth mindset helps students develop resilience, patience, and grit as they tackle new learning and challenges. It teaches them that we can all get better with practice and perseverance. (For more ideas about growth mindset, you can read a full blog post here.)

Fixed Vs. Growth Mindset

This activity helps students understand the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. First, talk about how a fixed mindset believes you are born good or bad at certain things, while a growth mindset believes you can make progress with hard work. Then read phrases and have your students sort them to the different sides of the brain. (Get this resource here.)

YET

this crown is a great growth mindset student activities

I love using the word “YET” to help motivate students. In fact, this can become a sort of motto around your classroom. Whenever someone starts to say “I can’t do this! It’s too hard!”, the whole class can remind them: “You mean you can’t do it yet!” (Get this resource here.)

Goal-Setting

Having a classroom culture of goal-setters and goal-getters may sound nice, but how do we achieve that? This flipbook activity helps students practice setting goals and thinking about the work it may take to actually achieve them. Talking about how different goals take different amounts of work to achieve helps students not get frustrated when challenges arise. (Get this resource here.)

Culture In Classroom

When thinking about the culture of classroom community you want to create, think about the four S’s and you will be on your way! Just remember: safe, seen, social skills, success. If you’re helping your students with those four things, your classroom culture is doing great!