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Getting to Know Your Students’ Interests

Happy Back to School Season!! This is Molly from The Sassy Sub and I am so excited to be guest blogging today at HoJo’s Teaching Adventures. We all know that building relationships with our students is a key element in establishing a positive classroom environment necessary for a successful school year!
5 Ways to Get to Know Your Students' Interests

There are many ways we can jump start the relationship building process early in the school year. Getting to know your students’ interests is crucial! Here are some different ways to do just that!

Students' Interests: Ask Parents

Who knows your students better than their own parents? Head straight to the source by having parents fill out a survey about their student. You might want to have them complete it during back to school night so that you definitely get them back.  Or, send it home the first week or two of school so parents have sometime to really think about their answers. You could offer a small treat to encourage students to return it. 🙂 I like to keep mine all together in my student information binder. I refer back to these throughout the school year!

Here are a few free options from Teachers Pay Teachers:
Short and sweet by Miss Nelson.  Download it here.
If you're on the lookout for great ideas to get to know your students this back to school season, you're in luck! You can get to know your Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students with this FREE ideas and downloads at this blog post. You'll see ideas for learning from parents, getting students to collaborate through conversations, learning more during recess, playing a Scoot game, and more. Click through to grab all the freebies now!
Alison from Learning in the Primary Pond provides both an English and Spanish version!
Download it here.
Beginning of the School Year Parent Survey (Spanish and English)

While parent surveys are great–especially for younger learners who might not be able to answer written questions just yet–going straight to the source is also extremely helpful! Plan to have your students fill out their own interest survey sometime during the first week of school.

This freebie by Bitten by the Teaching Bug is perfect for upper elementary.
Student Interest Survey: Getting to Know Your Students
This one is great for beginning readers! You can find it here by Stomping through First.

Back to School Reading Surveys for Beginning Readers

Even though we are in the classroom with our kids all day, the best time to learn the most about them is by observing them at recess.  I have to admit, sometimes I am so mentally exhausted at recess, I am not paying close attention to what my students are doing. With 100+ kids on the playground, I am usually walking around reminding students about rules or handling peer conflicts. But, last year, I realized that I was missing out on an important opportunity.

So, in order to be intentional about my time at recess, I brought a recording sheet with me so I could jot down observations about my kiddos. I only picked 2-4 kids to focus on each time so I could still balance my basic recess duties.

I find that the information I collect from observing students at recess is really helpful in working with students on social skills and relaying information to parents about their child’s social development.

If you're on the lookout for great ideas to get to know your students this back to school season, you're in luck! You can get to know your Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students with this FREE ideas and downloads at this blog post. You'll see ideas for learning from parents, getting students to collaborate through conversations, learning more during recess, playing a Scoot game, and more. Click through to grab all the freebies now!
You can download this recess recording sheet here for free. Or simply jot down notes on scratch paper–it doesn’t need to be fancy : )
Do you do morning meeting in your classroom? This year, our entire school will be implementing morning meeting as we launch our Responsive Classroom initiative. It is a perfect time to get to know your students through sharing which allows you to take account of your students’ emotional well-being.

Even if you don’t do a formal morning meeting, you can still include collaborative conversations to open up discussion and allow for students to share about themselves and their lives. Even though this might seem like a K-2 practice, it can be beneficial in upper elementary and even middle school.Here are some free resources to help get started!

Establishing expectations for speaking and listening:
Collaborative Conversation Rules Posters and Activity Cards FREE
 
 Back to School conversation starters:
Back to School Task Cards- Collaborative Conversations

Sometimes, we need to get creative about how we collect information. One of my favorite back to school activities is this “scoot”. If you aren’t familiar with scoot, it is essentially a set of cards with questions on them. You place one at each students’ desk, or around the room. Students use a recording sheet to write their answer to the question. So at one time, each student is answering 1 card (each with a different question). Once students are done, they “scoot” or move to the next card. This continues until they have responded to all cards (typically a class set around 20-24 cards but could be more or less). 

If you're on the lookout for great ideas to get to know your students this back to school season, you're in luck! You can get to know your Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students with this FREE ideas and downloads at this blog post. You'll see ideas for learning from parents, getting students to collaborate through conversations, learning more during recess, playing a Scoot game, and more. Click through to grab all the freebies now!
I can collect information about my students in a really fun way! I love to look over their recording sheets and see the similarities and differences in my students’ families and favorites. It not only provides me a lot of helpful info as far as interests go, I can use it to informally evaluate handwriting and spelling, too! You can find it here: B2S Scoot
I hope you are able to use at least one of these tools to help you get to know your students’ interests this school year! Once we gather the information, it makes connecting with them and building relationships that much easier 🙂
Students Interests

Filed Under: back to school, Beginning of School, free, freebie

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