Ideas in Education: Building Rapport with Students: Seven Reasons and Tips to Greet Them at the Door
One of our expectations this year was for students to be greeted at their classroom by their teachers.
When you enter a restaurant and many shops, someone greets you as you enter. The host makes you feel welcome and sets a positive tone for your dining or shopping experience. The same principle applies when students enter your classroom. While not always possible, we should strive to welcome our students to our classes every day.
7 Reasons and Tips to Greet Students at the Door
1. It fosters relationships with your students, enhancing their emotional needs (as well as yours) and fosters a sense of emotional belonging.
2. It provides an opportunity to offer praise and feedback.
I really appreciated how you initiated the conversation yesterday in our Socratic Seminar.
I really appreciated how you initiated the conversation yesterday in our Socratic Seminar.
Yesterday, you seemed to be off task on the group work (pause). I saw you on your phone a lot talking to Jose about some things. Your group is counting on you and the work you turned in doesn’t meet our expectations. This bothers me because I know that you have a lot to add to your group.
3. For some students transitions, like switching classes, are difficult. Greeting students with explicit directions, eases their transitions and establishes clear expectations.
Good morning. How are you today?
Good morning. How are you today?
Our do-now is posted. Do you have your foldable from yesterday?
Great! It will be of great help for you.
For some students, you may want to expand on this pre-conferencing even further by asking them to bring their foldable to you or giving more concise directions and then following up with a phrase like, “See if you can get the first two questions done in two minutes; I’ll be sure to come by to help.”
4. It gives you a chance to connect with every student and gauge each student’s emotional state.
5. Similarly, it gives us an opportunity to listen to students. These quick conversations can be quite revealing. Even though these are often quick conversations, the one-to-one nature of them allows students to be open, I had trouble with my homework...I’m having a really bad day. Do you mind if...
6. It provides you with an opportunity to model--and for students to practice--socially acceptable behaviors, like eye contact, a firm handshake, good posture, and conversational techniques. I greeted each student with a handshake, a high-five or a fist bump (in recent years there have been numerous studies showing the positive power of human touch) and one of my classroom “rules” was when someone asks you a conversational question, you exchange the favor. So for every time I asked, “How are you today?” or “Any plans for the weekend?” I expected an answer and a reciprocating question.
7. It’s a time saver, increasing student engagement and time on task. As a part of a consistent classroom routine, I could remind students about simple tasks, like turning in an assignment, picking up from an absence or I could cue them about something that might be different in today’s class.
Greeting students at the door is a simple and effective means of increasing student engagement and decreasing disruptive behaviors. The above is a modification of an article/blog I wrote . Since then further studies have been completed. One such study found that when teachers greeted students at the door, academic achievement increased by as much as 20 percentage points and led to a 9 percentage point decrease in disruptive student behaviors.
Tech Tip: Sharing Your Google Document as a PDF
This is a neat little trick to sharing a google doc or sheet as a pdf. It’s more efficient than downloading as a pdf because it means you don’t have to re-share PDFs or update PDF links since it automatically goes to the most recent version. It also helps keep your drive folders more organized.
Share your document
- Click SHARE
- Enter the name(s) of whom you would like to share with
- Choose permission level
- Click send
Copy, paste and send PDF link
- In Drive, select the document
- Click SHARE.
- Click COPY LINK and click DONE
- After you paste the link, change the end of the URL before sending it: For example change docs.google.com/document/d/12345/edit?usp=sharing to docs.google.com/document/d/12345/export?format=pdf
- Send the modified PDF link
This trick is similar to forcing copy (replace last part with copy).
Tasks, Important Information, Upcoming Events
Like many of you, I found Adaptive Scheduler to be slow and timing out. Our tech people, recommend using Firefox and/or clearing out your Chrome cache. Below is a recommended resource to clearing your cache. https://www.refreshyourcache.com/en/home/
Friday will be an A-Day with clubs.
Student Pictures: September 10 and September 11 (pictures will be taken during social studies classes)
Back to School Night: September 11 (6:30-8:30)
During Back to School night families will have an opportunity to meet with their child’s teachers by following their child’s schedule.
Time
|
Period
|
6:30-6:55
|
Mr. Vrhovac’s Presentation in Auditorium
|
7:00-7:07
|
1A
|
7:12-7:19
|
2A
|
7:24-7:31
|
3A
|
7:36-7:43
|
4A
|
7:48-7:55
|
1B
|
8:00-8:07
|
2B
|
8:12-8:19
|
3B
|
8:24-8:30
|
4B
|
Birthdays
9/9: Thomas Warren
9/10: Cullen Wade
9/11: Rob Garland
9/12: Kelly Lawrence
Birthdays we missed: Taylor Aylor (9/4), April Wilkerson (8/19), Virginia Scott (8/31)
Useful Information
Morning Announcement Stream: http://streaming.k12albemarle.org/ACPS/links.htm
Want something included on the Monticello Outlook Calendar, the Monticello website, in the PowerSchool Daily Bulletin, schoolwide Schoology accounts, or the student newsletter (viewed by parents, students and staff)? Please use this link https://goo.gl/forms/bIjfJLKokWPcEHx33
Worth Your Time
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