Our School is a Family Activity for Building School Community

Description

Want a meaningful extension activity to go along with the book Our School is a Family? This book companion (created by the author, Shannon Olsen) will help build school community, foster reading and writing skills, and is ideal for back to school time, school staff appreciation days, or any time of year!

It’s a “School Family Directory” to familiarize students with the various staff members at your school. It can help students with learning their names and their specific roles. The booklet also allows students to think of ways they can support school staff members in return, and show them appreciation.

You could have each student create their own booklet, or as an alternative, divide up the pages among students in your class and make one collective School Family Directory as a whole group. You might display your class’ booklet at the front of the room or on a bulletin board, or keep it in your classroom library for students to read or refer to.

Need an adapted version for beginning writers? This similar book companion may be more well suited for kindergarten, other primary classes, or students who need modified writing supports. It has options for letter-tracing and fill in the blank instead of the writing prompts:

Our School is a Family Mini Booklet

You can get both versions at a discount in the Our School is a Family Activities Bundle.

There are more pages included with this resource than you will actually need. Pick and choose the specific pages you wish to include, based on your own school. The download contains:

• 2 cover options to choose from: Whether you’re doing individual student booklets or a whole class book (one that says My School Family and another that says Our School Family).
• School Staff Pages: These contain writing prompts and space for illustrations or real photos. There are both female and male versions of all clipart of the school staff members. You can select and print which pages you want, based on the genders of the different staff members at your school.
• Student Pages: These pages are included in addition to the staff ones for students to think/write about ways in which they are an important part of their school family too.
• Editable Pages: With the editable pages, you can change any of the writing prompts, or job titles at the top (in case your school calls any of them something else).
• Additional Staff Pages: Your school may also have additional types of staff members that are not already in the booklet. If you’d like to add any extra pages of your own, there are more editable pages for that, with various female and male clipart options.

Here is a list of the School Staff Pages that are already included, all of which are editable by title:

• Teacher
• Principal
• Assistant Principal
• School Secretary
• Librarian
• Custodian
• Janitor
• School Counselor
• Speech Teacher
• School Nurse
• Cafeteria Worker
• Crossing Guard
• Bus Driver
• Art Teacher
• Music Teacher
• Gym Teacher
• P.E. Teacher
• Aide
• Volunteer
• Student Teacher

Please click on the “Preview” tab to see everything that comes with this resource.

You might also like this discounted GROWING BUNDLE of extension activities for all 5 books by Shannon Olsen, which includes these resources and more:

Our Class is a Family Class Family Album

Our Class is a Family bookmarks

Our Class is a Family Memory Book for the End of the Year

Our School is a Family Book Companion

Collaboration Station Book Companions 

A Letter From Your Teacher: On the First Day of School Book Companion

A Letter From Your Teacher: On the Last Day of School Book Companion

Or this MEGA Growing Bundle, which includes all of the above, plus a whole school year’s worth of Our Class is a Family themed Morning Meetings for weekly class community building.