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| Some students preferred to spend their time reading... |
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| ... or drawing ... |
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| ... or learning to play chess! |
Some of the highlights from the day include:
- My newest student (arrived just three weeks ago) noticing someone not being included and inviting them to take part in a game without making a big deal out of it.
- The sincere and sudden vocal excitement from all players when another player took a risky move in Black Jack and it paid off. The rest of the activity in the classroom stopped and we all revelled in the glory of a well-timed risk.
- This exchange, fully embracing the expectation to be good communicators :
"Do you feel like playing Spot It with me?"
"Not right now, but when I'm done this game of Solitaire I will."
"OK, sounds good."
- This statement when I approached a group playing Cranium, showing their willingness to improvise. "We don't really know what the actual rules are, so we made up our own. Is that OK?" YES.
One of the most important contributors to the success of GSPD was the lead-up over the two days preceding the actual event. As a class, we spend a significant amount of time focused on building strong community, so I already have some structures in place to set expectations collaboratively with my students. For this activity, I began by outlining my expectations of them for the day.
Students then took some time to come with expectations they had of me and of each other. Each class came up with their own, and the differences in their expectations is reflective of the culture of the individual classes. The grade 8s spend a lot of time with me (at least 3 hours daily), while the grade 7 class only comes to me for an hour each day. As a result, we haven't had as much time to focus on community building.
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| Grade 8 Expectations |
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| Grade 7 Expectations |
We also talked about what they were excited about for a day devoted to unstructured play, and what they were worried or concerned about. This part of the conversation was very helpful to me, as it let me put some of their worries to rest (some worried about what would happen if a toy was accidentally broken, some that they would not be able to handle a full day without an adult organizing them into activities and groups, others that there might be judgement about what games or activities people chose) I was so impressed with their openness in sharing their worries, and the care they took in responded to the concerns of others (some of the expectations above came out of the conversation about worries) Without those conversations ahead of time, I think our day could have played out very differently. Having a list of expectations that we co-created allowed me to quickly make reference to #4 for example, and students would use them to remind each other of what they should be doing.
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| This student taught multiple classmates how to play chess over the course of the day |
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| Students creating a marble maze together |
I had a moment of concern when I sent out my memo to parents last week, explaining the event. We have had some school closures lately because of weather, and this would be another day without "real school", but I did not receive any negative responses from parents at all. I've been really focused on building community with my parents this year as well, through very regular communication about what goes on in our classroom. I hope and believe this has contributed to a certain level of trust when it comes to some of the paths I take with my students.
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| Grade 7s at play! |
Building a strong community is the reason I can engage in the types of activities I write about on this blog. It takes time, and it is incredibly worth it.
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