Creating Connections

Hi,

it's holly here I am here to introduce you

to our new topic for our development training tips.

This month we're going to be talking about creating connections in the classroom

now before we dive into those juicy details,

I want to go ahead and do a recap of the

wonderful video that laura gave us last month on adult learning.

A lot of the things that laura showed us last month will also apply to

this month's topic on creating connections and how to do that in our classrooms.

So I want to recap three different points um from what she shared with us.

The first one being that learners can listen with retention for 20 minutes,

so we want to make sure that we change up the topics.

The second point is to involve the learners every 10 minutes

so we can do that multiple ways right by doing polls,

watching videos, doing activities or even just asking questions.

And then the last point or the third point

there is animated images tend to be more memorable.

So if you can use animation or use visuals that can

help our students to retain the information better or remember it.

So we're going to take those three points into consideration

as we jump into this month's topic on creating connections.

Are you ready?

Let's go,

let's go ahead and start our discussion with two different quotes on connection.

I feel like this is gonna set us off into the right direction on this topic.

The first one is a question by Courtney King that says, how do we make communities?

Rather than classrooms?

Let that sink in for just a minute.

Now when I thought about that question,

I thought about the two words communities and classrooms right.

Communities To me sounds so much warmer than a classroom.

A community is a group of people who come together who work together,

who share thoughts and feelings together.

Um and really just overall, it sounded warm to me, which is welcoming. So I think

considering that, right, can we make our classrooms communities?

We're going to talk about some ways that we can do that.

The next one here is by Simon Sinek. Hopefully I'm saying that right?

It says when people feel connected,

they feel safe to express themselves and share ideas and personal insights

going back to feeling connected, right? They feel safe to share

ideas. Personal insights.

I feel like this one to me when I read this really reminded me of our coffee breaks,

Those coffee breaks are simple short, there are only 15 minutes,

but it gives us a chance to go outside of work

and connect.

We talk about personal things, we share stories, we have fun together,

we do activities and it really livens it up, warms it up and makes us feel connected.

It takes away the scariness of being vulnerable

and I think that that is what we're striving for.

We're striving for that connection. We're striving to make our students feel safe

and have fun and I'm going to share some ideas

with you this month on how you can do that.

One thing I'm going to challenge us to do is instead of viewing these as icebreakers,

we're gonna call them connecting exercises okay,

we're focusing on connection and we want this to be something again,

that sounds warm.

Right? So instead of me saying

ice breakers, we're gonna call them connecting exercises,

which I think is a really great way of putting it

and we can thank Katrina Kennedy for that.

Now the first activity that I'm going to show

you are connecting exercise has to do with pictures.

I'm sure we've all heard the saying a picture is worth 1000 words.

So let's see if that's true.

This connecting exercises. A photo reflection.

Now this set of images was given to us by Katrina Kennedy.

If you do not mess with this one, if it's not your cup of tea,

I have created a couple other versions that you can use that you might like more.

But to give you an example of how this works,

you would pull up these photos just like they're shown here and you would ask someone

in your class to select which one they identify with today and have them share.

Why?

So for example, if I called on Suzy and said Suzie,

which one of these do you identify with today and why

she might say, I don't know,

I identify with the oranges because I woke up bright and early.

Um or I feel like the asparagus because it's green and crunchy. I don't know right?

They might come up with different ideas and I feel like as a facilitator,

it's always best to demonstrate what you're looking for first so that your

students understand how you want them to respond or view this activity.

The next one is one that I created

and my goodness, who doesn't love puppies, right? It's so cute.

So in this one, I was thinking what you might ask is okay today's adoption day,

which puppy would you adopt and why?

Right.

Easy way to open up the conversation and learn

a little bit about your students in the process.

This one here is just another version. This has weather.

So another way to look at it depending on which

one speaks to you or how you're feeling that day.

You might choose one of those three or even make your own this one for example,

you might say which of these pictures do you feel reflect your mood today and why

an example of that might be, you know, looking at this,

I feel like the clouds reflect my mood.

My brain is still a little cloudy since my coffee hasn't kicked in.

Okay, so just again, make sure that you demonstrate what you're looking for.

Give them an example and then open it up to your students and that

can be in chat or verbal depending on what works best for your classroom.

Alright. the next one is short and sweet.

This is called, one question, I've given you some examples here.

The first question,

what did you want to be when you grew up and what is your favorite vacation spot?

So you can change those questions to fit what feels comfortable for you.

But this is an easy quick way to engage your learners go

outside of the content but not take a lot of time.

So one question, that's all it is,

whatever question you feel comfortable with and again,

that can be in chat or verbal.

The next one is show and tell

there's two ways that you can play this.

The first way is to have someone grab something near them and talk about it,

that could be pretty insightful, right?

Each of us have different work stations scenarios,

some of our students are joining from home,

some are in a computer lab or some are working from a computer,

right in their department.

So it could be interesting what we find out.

The other option is to write down five descriptive words about

an item near you and then ask your students to pick two

from the five to describe themselves and that version might be if

you have a little bit more time or maybe less students.

Alright, now this one should look familiar to us, the wheel of wonder.

We've used this for many things,

I know some trainers have already implemented this into their training,

This is just a version of what you can do with the wheels.

So you can see there's different questions or activities,

their spin the wheel um and then ask someone

something that they're proud of or something you learned today and you can adjust

what's in each of those slots by opening it up and making changes.

So if anybody doesn't have the wheel of wonder and would like it,

please let me know and we can send it to you.

The next one here is 20 questions -13. Kind of a silly name, right?

And this one also came from Katrina Kennedy.

The purpose here is to connect your learners to each

other and the content through a series of questions.

So what you'll do is you'll create a slide with seven

questions and animate the questions to show one at a time,

You can adjust that depending,

so if you don't have enough time or you need it to be short,

you can do three or four questions,

you're going to share the questions on the

slide and then have them write their answers

for each question on a piece of paper and make sure that you let them know

they're going to be sharing their answers.

Okay, So don't put anything too personal or private

um and then provide your answer as an example, so again make sure that you

mimic or show what you want to happen first, so everyone feels comfortable

And then if you have time you can put your students in groups of

2-3 and breakout rooms so that they can share their responses with each other.

And if you don't have time for a breakout room,

then you can just have them share with the group how they answered.

And it's pretty interesting because everyone is answering the

same questions but the answers are very different and

broad so it lets us learn a little bit

about each other without taking up too much time.

Now the 20 questions -13 does have a one page how to so

if anyone is interested in that I can send that to you,

it gives you some ideas of questions that

you can include um and some additional instructions

and in closing a quote by Brene a Brown,

which we all love says I define connection as the

energy that exists between people when they feel seen,

heard and valued.

So how important it is that we really strive to make that connection in our

classrooms or maybe our communities is a way that we can look at it.

Um and I think taking our thought process

from an icebreaker to a connecting exercise again,

just shows the value that we have and really connecting

with our students having that warm environment where people feel safe

to share and feel valued.

So I hope that these activities will find their way into your classes and if they do,

I can't wait to hear how successful they are for you.

So that's what we have for this month.

Uh, and we look forward to bringing you a new video next month. Thanks guys. Bye.

Creating Connections

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