Classroom Mission

StatementsHow to create a positive and

collaborative classroom culture

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Written by Monika Gruss

Monika GrussTeaching Authentically

You are creating a class mission, so it needs to be created as a team.

Ensure that your students see you as being part of the team and not as a leader.

Discuss why it is important to make a class mission statement (working as a team towards a common goal – learning new things, a sense of pride, developing team skills, etc.)

1. Work with your class as a team

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You can tie this in nicely within your literacy block, learning about advertising and how different companies choose mottos that makes their company unique. Discuss this with the grade and see what mottos they come up with, that best describes them. A few mottos I have used are..

Team 5M: Individually we are one drop, together we are the ocean.Junior Butterflies: Can we do it? Yes we can!

3. Create a class motto

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Decide on actions your class wants to take. This can be a little tricky for students. You may wish to help them out a little here while you brainstorm as a class.

Some actions might relate to academics, work habits and behavior.

You may choose to write these as bullet points or turn them into sentences.

It’s a good idea to keep it short… something the students can remember and talk to others about (2-3 sentences).

4. Creating your statement

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“Our mission is build active and creative minds, a sense of understanding and

compassion for others, and the courage to act on our beliefs. We strive to learn each day by cooperating with each other, respecting each other and by always showing effort to achieve

our goals.”

An example of a mission statement – older students

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“In our classroom we love to learn. We will always try our best and not be afraid to make mistakes. We will respect every one and be caring towards each other.”

Or

“The Junior Gadgets … Love to learn Try their best Are not afraid of making mistakes and Respect and care for every one”

An example of a mission statement – younger students

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Looking at your mission statement, discuss how their class emblem may look like. This makes another great literacy lesson looking at different emblems. I like looking at the national emblem and discussing how each part represents the country. Most students are not aware of what is on our national emblem.

5. Create a class Emblem

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Examples of class emblems created by students

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More examples of class emblems

Notice how each emblem has different ideas? These are all from different students in the class. Monika

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Display your mission statement and emblem in a spot where every one can see.

Many classes display these on the front door as a reminder and for all guests to look and read.

I like to take coloured copies and post one on the door and one in the classroom for all to see, so I can make reference to it through out the year (works a treat!)

Display your mission statement and emblem

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The important thing to remember during this process is the art of making sure each student has a say and agrees at each step of making the class mission. We want every child to feel they have input into the final product. A good way to do this is to use collaborate learning strategies.

Collaborate Learning

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To ensure that all students have had a say (and others don’t control the conversation), create sharing sticks by placing every student’s name on a paddle pop stick and placing it in a bucket labeled “It’s my turn to share”.

Pull out a stick and the student on the stick can contribute, or decide to share later. Once the student has shared, they can be placed in another bucket labeled “I have shared”.

This is a good strategy for teachers to keep track of who has shared, and who hasn’t.

N.B. Put your sharing tubs up high away from students as they have been known to put their sticks in the “I have shared” bucket without you knowing!!! Trust me, I know… cheeky little kids!

Sharing SticksCollaborative Learning Strategy:

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Once you have a number of different names/mottos, it is important for students to choose fairly. To do this I often do ‘blind voting’ where students cover their eyes, and put up their hand when they want to vote for something. I find this really important as a lot of students like to copy others. I stress the importance of students using their own minds, and this works best as they don’t have to succumb to peer pressure by choosing what their friends want.

Tally up the votes, and show the students the results.

Blind VotingCollaborative Learning Strategy:

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1. Post all student’s drawings around the classroom in a circle.2. Each student is given 3 or more sticker dots.3. Begin the Bustop: All students walk around looking at each of the designs,

thinking about the ideas/concepts they like best.4. Once the students have returned to their spot, ask them to now go and put

their dots on the ideas/designs they liked best.N.B. Have extra stickers for you to put dots on students work that does not have many dots. You want to make sure that no student feels bad that their work isn’t liked.

5. Allow students to talk about the designs and what they liked. Write these comments down.

6. Collect all the samples and comments and get a group of students (ask for the class artists) to put all the ideas together to form one emblem.

7. Once complete, Artists present the emblem to the class and ask for feedback.8. The artists make adjustments if necessary.9. Repeat until the whole class agrees with the end product.

Hot Dotting & Bus StopCollaborative Learning Strategy:

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You are on your way to creating a positive and collaborate classroom culture.

If you are interested in further professional learning opportunities, please check out my

website.

www.monikagruss.com.au

Ta Da!

Monika GrussTeaching

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