2.8K

Creating a positive and inclusive classroom culture is key to helping students learn and grow. When students feel happy and supported in school, they’re more likely to show up every day and take ownership of their learning!

So what is classroom culture in real terms, and how do you start establishing it in your own school? We’ve got instructional strategies, helpful resources, and applicable tips from experienced teachers to help you build a positive and inclusive community with your students.

1. Start building classroom culture on the first day

If the first day of school is coming up, it’s a great opportunity to start building community in the classroom right away. From icebreakers to group projects to writing classroom rules as a group, you’ll find opportunities to establish a supportive and collaborative culture.

You can even start by asking students, “What is classroom culture?” Younger classmates may need some guidance on the discussion about a learning environment where students feel safe, supported, and included with the rest of their peers. Older students can contribute their own ideas (such as “A feeling where I actually like being at school,” or “The way your teachers and classmates treat you”).

Find common ground with peers in class

Encourage inclusivity from the outset by focusing on how students are similar to each other. Getting-to-know-you games and group assignments are great ways to get classmates to find common ground and start building the foundations of a strong friendship.

Back to School No Prep FREEBIE: Building Classroom Community
By The Teacher Studio
Grades: 2nd-5th
Subject: Character Education

Help students get to know each other with a resource that builds classroom community from the first day of school. Elementary learners use a Venn diagram to find out how much they have in common with one or two peers, making it easy to relate to new friends right away.

Create a positive class culture with clear classroom guidelines

Establish your classroom as a place where students can try, grow, and try again with guidelines that map out your desired culture as clearly as possible. Use statements like “Nothing has to be perfect in our class” or “Making mistakes is how we learn!” to demonstrate an environment where students have the freedom to fail.

Back to School Positive Classroom Culture — Guidelines, SEL, and Growth Mindset
By Workshop Classroom
Grades: 3rd-5th

Prepare your classroom to be a safe, supportive environment with a collection of worksheets and class posters on growth mindset, classroom guidelines, and social-emotional learning. This resource is an excellent addition to your back-to-school planning kit as well as an all-year focus on positive classroom culture.

2. Hold class meetings to get on the same page

Class meetings help bring the values of communication and collaboration into your classroom. They establish the priorities of the upcoming day and week, give you a chance to acknowledge individual student accomplishments, and show classmates that you value their input and participation.

Start by setting an agenda in your class meeting that’s both predictable and flexible, allowing you to address new issues within a familiar format. Build in opportunities for students to showcase their knowledge or express their concerns. You can even show funny movie clips or memes to reinforce a culture of humor and meeting students where they are!

Incorporate class meetings into your daily schedule

Where do you start when planning class meetings? Find the right resource to help you write agendas and map out topics in advance, so your class meetings run as smoothly as the rest of your instruction.

Digital EDITABLE Class Meetings Freebie for Google Drive
By A Basket Full of Apples by Katie
Grades: 1st-5th
Subject: English Language Arts

Take class meetings to the next level with a resource that encourages students to take the lead! With digital forms that you can edit for your class’s needs, this resource is a great way to let students positively contribute to daily procedures and a positive classroom culture.

3. Build relationships with your students

Relationships are foundational to a welcoming and inclusive classroom. “Educators should prioritize building relationships so that students can feel comfortable and secure,” says Angela from Upper Elementary Antics. If a student feels safe, understood, and respected, they’ll be better equipped to learn. 

You can start with daily conversations, scheduled student-teacher conferences, or holding office hours for students to come and chat with you when they need to. From math questions to their favorite movies, any topic is a positive way to build a relationship with your wonderful students!

Infuse kindness into your classroom culture

Most teachers would agree that kindness is an important value in any culture, but one that’s difficult to explicitly teach. Incorporate ways for students to be kind to each other both inside and outside your lessons, whether it’s a “Caught Being Kind” campaign or a reward system for students to support each other in the classroom.

Kindness Challenge | Secret Missions to Build a Positive Classroom Culture
By Learn Grow Blossom
Grades: 2nd-5th
Subject: Classroom Community

Focus on being kind to each other with a classroom culture resource that assigns secret missions of kindness! Print and digital versions of mission statements and instructions guide students through acts of kindness that emphasize mindfulness, compassion, and friendship.

4. Bring caregivers into your classroom culture

Caregivers may reside outside the classroom, but they’re still an important part of your classroom culture! Find a form of parent-teacher communication that lets you reach out to caregivers in positive ways throughout the school year, and explore ways to bring them into the classroom despite their work schedule or prior requirements.

Non-academic awards assemblies, filmed class plays for parents to see after work, and student-led conferences are all great ways to establish that families and loved ones are an important part of students’ learning journeys. It can also lead to increased student success, which is great news for everyone!

5. Celebrate your students’ successes

When you celebrate student wins, it keeps your class motivated and excited to learn. Find ways to make student success part of your classroom culture with these expert tips:

• “Using Zoom, we gave each other thumbs ups when a student would share, or we would ‘silently clap’ for our friends when they bravely spoke up and answered questions.” — Amy Lynn from Amy Lynn Teaches
• “[I’m] implementing a house-system to foster teamwork and community. Students will earn points for participation, helping others, kindness, following rules, etc. They can keep earning points even at home so this will help all students feel connected to each other.” — Kate from BreatheSmileTeach
• “I want to try out mini light-up [marquee] signs. I’ll have [the sign] next to me on screen while teaching with the students name on the sign. Everyone will see the highlighted student’s name throughout the whole lesson.” — Tanya from Gifted Teacher 305
• “Fun virtual rewards can be in the form of online games that the class can play together. […] I’m trying out a virtual show and tell. The idea works the same as a regular show and tell, whereby students will prepare something they want to share with the class, and they can talk about it in front of their peers: it’s presented online instead of in-person, but the benefits are the same. Students will be learning about one another and hopefully finding things in common as they do these show and tell activities.” — Katie from Teachers Resource Force

6. Connect with students one-on-one

Teachers need to know who their students are in order to support and motivate them in meaningful ways, so it’s important to get to know each student individually. Find ways to acknowledge and connect with students one-on-one, whether it’s attending their extracurricular band concerts, asking them about their soccer game over the weekend, or writing emails to students to tell them how proud you are of their progress.

7. Have wellness checks throughout the year

Students are under a lot of stress at any point during the school year, so it’s important to make the classroom a place where they can seek support. Katie from Teachers Resource Force suggests conducting wellness check-ins. “This can be in the form of a simple questionnaire on Google Forms where you ask your students a series of quick questions each day,” she says.

“By offering this, you are providing your students with an opportunity to share how they are doing and raise any issues that they might be having,” Katie adds. “Knowing students feel listened to helps build rapport, and the responses they provide offer you an opportunity to act on any of their concerns.”

Check in with students as part of your routine

When social-emotional check-ins are part of your classroom culture, students know they can come to you with their problems later. Use posters for younger students to reference their feelings at the beginning of each school year, or assign graphic organizers and writing assignments for older kids to express themselves to you.

Check In Check Out CICO
By Check In with Mrs G
Grades: 3rd-6th
Subjects: Character Education, School Counseling

Whether you’re talking to individual students or your class as a whole, checking in with learners is a great way to ensure they know you really care. Use this resource with a CICO (Check In, Check Out) journal graphic organizer to check in on student sleep, accomplishments, feelings, and concerns.

8. Address conflicts in a healthy way

No matter how strong your classroom culture is, you’re bound to encounter conflict during the school year. Help students resolve their differences in healthy ways by infusing positive conflict resolution in your classroom management, whether it’s peer remediation, restorative justice, or reflective writing prompts before making an apology.

Incorporate and model these practices long before they’re needed in your classroom. In the first week of school, have volunteers pretend to get into an argument about something, and show the class how they would resolve the issue using the rules and philosophies established in your classroom culture (such as discussion, coming to the teacher, finding common ground, etc.). 

Bring restorative practices to conflict resolution

Focus on repairing relationships rather than levying punishment in your class with resources that emphasize honest discussions about feelings. When restorative practices are embedded in your classroom culture, students may be less likely to misbehave for attention, and may be able to get to the roots of their own attitudes and behavior.

Restorative Circle Prompts
By The Radical Maestra
Grades: 3rd-12th

Ideal for both daily journal prompts and moments of conflict, these circle prompts based on restorative practices put relationships first and punishment second. Students discuss their point of view with a resource that guides positive talk in honest, emotion-based conversations.

9. Include every student in every lesson

A crucial component of an inclusive classroom is ensuring every student is reflected in your classroom’s culture. If students feel included in their classroom community, they’ll feel more invested in their learning and connected to their classmates.

To help give everyone the opportunity to share, Jennifer from Happy Teacher Mama uses a timer so that all students have time to speak without interruption. You can also set up a random way to call on students to answer questions, encourage alternating students to showcase their projects, or allow each student to reflect on a lesson in an exit ticket about their own experience that day.

10. Offer a variety of ways to engage

Not everyone in your class is eager to raise their hand and express their opinion. “It’s important to use a variety of different ways to connect with students so that they have multiple ways to access the content, make their voice heard, and demonstrate understanding,” says Lindsay from Lindsay Ann Learning. 

The key isn’t to find the one perfect way for students to engage in class — it’s to have many different ways for them to reach out. “Have discussion threads or posts, use platforms where students can create a video that stars them, or give them the option to not show themselves on camera,” adds Kristin from Samson’s Shoppe. 

11. Represent students of marginalized backgrounds

Take steps to actively include students of marginalized backgrounds in classroom culture. As Laura from The Fancy Counselor explains, “Black and Indigenous students of color tend to be marginalized in educational spaces by way of things like disparities in disciplinary practices, curriculum that silences the voices of minority people and marginalized people, policies and services that don’t best serve our minority students.” 

She continues, “Many times, those policies and procedures ignore racial trauma that comes in the form of daily microaggressions that our Black Indigenous Students of Color tend to deal with on a daily basis.”

More Tips for Building Classroom Culture

Once you’ve established the important principles of your classroom culture, it’s time to get to the “how” part of building a supportive learning environment! Use these ideas to create an environment where students feel heard and appreciated throughout the entire school year.

• Make your classroom management clear, concise, and above all, consistent. Students feel safe when they know what’s coming next, whether it’s a transition between lessons or a consequence for unacceptable behavior.
• Vary classroom seating arrangements often to keep students engaged during lessons, and to incentivize them to focus by seating them with friends. (Don’t worry, you can move socializing students around the next time you change seats!)
• Use the bulletin board to shout out student success, whether it’s someone moving up a reading level or scoring the winning basket in their tournament game.
• Speaking of classroom decorations, make the decór in your classroom relevant to student interests. You may get more buy-in from a poster of their favorite movie than a chart with the parts of speech!
• Let students teach you sometimes. They’re likely experts in slang, song lyrics, and sports stats, and modeling active learning for them lets them know you’re genuinely interested in their lives.

Classroom Culture Starts With You

Building a positive classroom culture and inclusive learning environment is key to helping students make progress throughout the school year. But it’s not up to the students to bring classroom culture through the door — it’s up to you. Find more positive classroom culture resources to communicate with students that they’re valued and important at school, and that you’re there for them whenever they need you.