Fostering Classroom Communication

Hey Bloggers, 

So, I got an internship! Woohoo! As I was thinking about how I wanted next fall to play out a thought came to my mind about how to communicate effectively and properly with my students so they feel comfortable and successful in my classroom... So I decided to blog about it. 

Communication is an early and fundamental decision that needs to be made before the school year begins. There is a broad array of how you can have effective communication in the classroom. Some of the ways that I found are to... 

• Build a group identity
• Ensure that the teacher has ways of getting to know each student better
• Enable the teacher to share their own thoughts about teaching
• Provide a shorthand for quick communication among members of the classroom. 

One way that I have decided to foster communication is to have morning meeting in my classroom everyday. This is one way that all students will feel 100% successful and be able to share their thoughts and concerns. I will also have a mailbox where students can leave me notes about anything they want to talk about. This way I will be able to respond to them thoughtfully and on my own time without having to interrupt class. Another way that I found in the book that I really liked is hold goal setting conferences with the students. These are when the student and teacher meet to talk about their progress and they examine some of the students work, their strengths and their weaknesses. Another way to establish good communication is to use Dialogue Journals. These are designed solely for the purpose of allowing students and teachers to communicate and talk in ways that are not possible during class. The entries can be about anything they want and then they turn it into the teacher and she writes back to them by showing interest in their writing. I really love this idea. I think that it would really help students who need someone to talk to. Sometimes writing things down is a lot easier for kids than talking about it. 

I want to be able to have the type of relationship that student will be remember for a life time. 

Till next time,