Now, contrast this list with the teaching methods in a typical high school course Ignore these suggestions and notice how students fail to connect with the content.
The Student-Student Relationship
To develop powerful student-to-student relationships, you have to lay the initial groundwork. Elementary schoolchildren are taught kindness, being supportive of their neighbor, and helping out whenever necessary. Somehow much of that spirit is often lost by the time students reach their teen years, at which point the typical behavior is put-downs, mean text messages, sarcasm, and indifference. Here are several brief examples of how you can alter this negative pattern:
-Establish a positive, sharing, supportive climate in your classroom.
-Set clear class guidelines for behavior (no put-downs is a good start)
-Model teamwork: relate to other teachers, parents, and students in a supportive way.
-Allow students to share about their family, pets, hobbies, and so on (strengths).
-Use weekly get-to-know-you activities that are casually blended into other activities so there's no discomfort.
-Model how to relate to each other in a polite way, and ask students to do the same.
- Conduct some out-of-class learning activities such as field trips, bus trips, camping, or sports so that students can be in a novel setting that often breaks down barriers.
-Build a sense of family in the classroom
-Have students work with partners and in teams.
-Choose class projects that students will get excited about; elicit their feedback.