Classroom Faces - Classroom Community Building

How do you build a sense of community in a classroom?  With things like cyber-bullying becoming more of a problem, how do you encourage positive thinking and kindness in your classroom?  I have been giving this a lot of thought lately.  I know with younger students bucket filling is a common classroom management/community building strategy. 

I have been brainstorming ideas for upper elementary and middle school students.  After talking with a friend, I came up with a Bulletin board idea that mimics Facebook.  This is a fun activity for Teachers and Grades 4-6 to build morale, positive attitudes, and a sense of community. Students and teachers create a Facebook type profile and can send each other Smile Status updates with encouraging messages. I am working on some other ideas, but I think this could be a fun activity at this point of the year when students and teachers are both getting restless and sometimes keeping positive attitudes can become more difficult.

You can purchase the Classroom Faces activity on my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

Student Profiles:

Teachers can have fun, too:

Smile Status Updates:

How do you build a sense of community in your classroom?


On a side note, I am working on my writing inspiration for the week. I will post them on Monday.  With April being poetry month, I wanted to create some activities for analyzing poetry to also go along with the poems I post each week. I am hoping to finish tomorrow. Here is a sneak preview: