Building a School Community Beyond the Classroom
Teachers do a LOT to build classroom community and positive student relationships throughout the school year. It’s undoubtedly an important priority to make! Thinking even bigger picture, whole school community building activities are definitely worth making time for as well.
The book Our School is a Family can serve as a starting point. It’s a read aloud that gets kids thinking about the type of school community they want to help build.
There are all kinds of beneficial outcomes in helping students understand that community goes beyond their own classroom. It makes students feel extra cared for and safe in their learning environment. In addition to their teacher and classmates, there’s a comfort in knowing that they have an even bigger support system of people who are also there to help.
Focusing on school community building activities can also lead to:
- Feelings of inclusion. Students can feel that they belong, and that they are a part of something big.
- More gratitude. When students have a heightened awareness of the ways in which various helpers contribute at school, they are more likely to show appreciation (in and out of the classroom).
- An improvement in overall school culture. When kids feel connected to other school staff members too, everyday interactions that take place all around campus are much more positive.
Here are some school community building activities to help cultivate all of the above! They go right along with the book Our School is a Family.
School Community Discussion
After reading aloud the book, use it to spark a conversation with your students about why a school community matters. You might start the conversation on a smaller scale with your own classroom community. Then, move to the larger scope of your school.
Utilizing examples from the book as a jumping off point, some possible discussion starters might be:
- Do we have any of those same kinds of staff members at our school too? Who are they and what are some ways they help us?
- Every school family is unique. Do we have any of our own special school family members that were not shown in the book?
- All of the different helpers at our school family work really hard, and they do a lot for us. What are some ways we could show them that they are appreciated?
Once the read aloud and pre-discussion have helped get the wheels turning in their heads, you could then lead into some school community building activities.
School Family Directory
This “School Family Directory” aligns right with the Our School is a Family book. It helps better familiarize students with the various helpers at their own school.
Through this school community building activity, students identify the specific roles of different staff members. It also encourages kids to think of ways that they themselves can contribute in return.
Each page includes a space for a student illustration. Or you could also use real photos of staff members, if making one collective booklet with the whole class (more on that below)! There is also space to respond to writing prompts.
In addition to the schools staff pages, a student page is also a part of the directory. Kids are important members of a school family too, after all!
It’s a simple way of encouraging kids to think of ways that they can contribute to their school community in a positive way, just like school staff members do.
Make it Your Own!
An editable version of each school family member page is provided. You can customize any of the prompts, or job titles at the top of the page. This is in case your school might refer to certain school staff roles by a different name.
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, the resource also has contains even more editable pages. They come with various clipart options.
More pages are provided than you will actually need. You can just pick and choose the specific pages you need, based on the different staff members at your school. Here are the ones that are already included with the resource, ready to print and go:
- 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
There are female and male versions of the school staff clipart for each page. Some duplicate pages are provided for jobs that have different common names (custodian vs. janitor, gym vs. P.E. teacher). This way you can print the one that your school calls it.
The pages can be copied and just stapled together in a packet, or however you might choose to bind them (a coiled spine from a book binding machine, hole-punched and secured with yarn or a binder ring, etc.)
Collective Whole Class Booklet
There are a couple of different options as far as HOW to have your students create the booklet. One way that I briefly mentioned earlier is a collective booklet, made together by the whole class.
As a whole class, you might first do a brainstorm of all the important staff members at your school, along with their names. After you have completed the list, assign a specific page (or pages) of the booklet to each student. Or you might opt to have the kids work in partners or small groups. Once everyone has completed their respective pages, you can put all of them together into one collective School Family Directory created by the whole class.
Once assembled, there are a ton of different ways you might display and use the class booklet:
- Place it on a white board ledge or shelf at the front of your classroom.
- Hole punch the top lefthand corner of the book and fasten with a binder ring. Use the ring to hang the book up on one of the walls in your room.
- Use each individual page to create a school community bulletin board.
- Laminate and bind the pages, and keep it as an independent reading choice in your classroom library. Students LOVE reading material that they themselves and their classmates have created on their own!
You might even consider making an extra copy to send to the school library or front office for the entire school to enjoy!
Individual Booklets
As an alternative to creating one whole class booklet, you could have each student create their very own (there’s an identical booklet cover included with the resource titled My School Family).
If you choose to make individual booklets, I would highly recommend spreading this activity out over a longer span. Have the kids work on a little at a time rather than trying to knock it all out at once. Each week you might highlight one or two staff members, or possibly each day during back to school time.
You could also choose to coordinate the booklet activity with specific appreciation days or weeks. For instance, you could have the kids complete the school librarian page right before National Librarian Day.
Make it a Writing Center
Since you’ll probably choose not to include all of the provided pages with the resource (there are a lot, after all!) you could save some of the extra ones for a writing center.
Print off those additional pages and have students fill them out any time of the year! They may be inspired to write about a particular staff member after having a recent positive interaction with him/her. The pages could even serve as types of thank you cards. After students complete a page, encourage them to actually deliver it to the school staff member they wrote about.
If you have every student in your class fill out a page during any staff celebrations throughout the year, put all those pages into a book for the staff member that’s being highlighted.
Adapted Version for Early Writers & Students Needing Modified Support
I’ve created an adapted version of this same activity for the littles (kindergarten, etc.) too. It could also be used for any students who might need the differentiation.
Instead of the writing prompts, it has options for letter tracing and fill in the blank. The pages with fill in the blank can be utilized for students who can do their own letter formation. OR you can use these pages to customize any of the specific wording. For example, if your school might call a certain staff role something different, you can fill in the blank with your own handwritten lettering for students to trace.
Bundle and Save
There’s also the option of grabbing both activities together in a discounted bundle!
Many teachers prefer to have a copy of both versions of this activity. This way, they’re able to differentiate and meet the needs of different levels of writers in their class. It’s also nice to have both if you think you might ever change grade levels in the future.
Do you happen to already own my growing bundle of book companions (the one with all of the resources that go with Our Class is a Family, and both A Letter From Your Teacher books)? If so, you are in luck!
Both versions of this School Family Directory activity are included in the growing bundle too. Go to your past orders on either on TPT or my website shop (whichever one you purchased from). Simply re-download this bundle to get these new activities that go with the new book for FREE!
If you don’t already have this growing bundle, you can still go get it now! Whenever I create future book activities, you’ll be able to re-download the bundle and get those for free! It truly is the best savings (especially over time!) on all of the activities that go with my books.
More School Community Building Activities
Want to keep extending school community building even further? Here are a few more ideas to help strengthen community among students and staff:
- Invite different staff members to come and read aloud in your classroom
- Spotlight a specific staff member with your students each week
- Make note of recognized days to celebrate school support staff. National Custodian Day, National Librarian Day, National School Nurse Day etc. Have your class make thank you notes, a signed thank you poster, etc.
- Big Buddy programs (pairing students from an upper grade class and primary class to do activities together)
- School Passport program. Take students on a tour of the school! Preferably at the beginning of the year, but a refresher any time of year is great too. They could earn a “stamp” (or sticker, or check off boxes with a marker, etc.) for each spot they visit. At each spot, arrange to meet a school staff member there. Have them tell the class about their role at school and the behavior expectations in that particular spot. For example, go to the blacktop and have a lunch supervisor introduce him/herself and talk with the kids about the playground rules.
The Bigger Picture
While students may not see all staff members every day, all those helpers still play a crucial role in the daily workings of a school. This book companion allows your class to think about how important each school family member truly is! And how students themselves can really help contribute to their school too in a positive way.
Mostly, it’s an excellent opportunity to showcase the importance of supporting one another as a community. It would be hard for a school (or any workplace that your students grow up to be a part of) to function without that. I know for a fact that your school certainly wouldn’t be what it is without you! 💛
