Learning Communities Activities
Building
Successful Learning Communities in the Classroom involves a four-step
process. Activities are sequenced and carefully adjusted by the teacher
throughout the process to bring students to the point that theyare
getting along with and working well with their classmates and are
willing to take academic risks. The steps and activity types are:
- Warm-up, Ground Rules, Get to Know You Activities – designed to break the ice and help students get to know each other
- Deinhibitizer – activities designed to help students become less self-conscience and willing to try things in front of classmates.
- Trust
– activities designed to create trust in and among the students so that
they will support each other’s academic efforts and to encourage
academic risk-taking.
- Group Problem-Solving –
opportunities for students to work together to solve problems and
achieve tasks that they cannot solve or achieve on their own. In this
step students learn to work effectively with others and hopefully
generalize those skills to situations outside the classroom.
Click the buttons in the menu to the left to see examples of the different types of activities.