Starting the Year Off Right

Everyone tells you that a child won't care about learning until they know you care about them. The Rita Pierson video really drove that home. Each year I've been teaching I've grown in my understanding of the importance of relationships and in my strategies for building relationships and community in my classroom.
Thanks to another blogger, I have a great start-of-the-year activity that I've used for the past two years. Sara Vanderwerf shared on her blog about her use of name tents and it has been a rich tool for building one-to-one relationships with students, starting on day 1.
On the first day of school, I ask students to create a name tent. On the inside of the name tent is a grid for student-teacher communication  -- the First 5 Days. At the end of each class period, I ask students to write something in the name tent. It could be a question, something they want me to know, a suggestion, anything at all. Each night, I write back to each student.

I've found this really helps me get to know each student at the start of the year and allows me to learn things about them that I would not otherwise learn in whole class meetings. Lots of times they will tell me things they are worried about -- not doing well in class, speaking in front of people, having to work in groups.
I also use some of the Capturing Kids' Hearts approach that I learned at a previous school. I've found that having students build a social contract is a great start for them taking ownership in the classroom community. I have also found that having daily raters helps to keep the focus/attention on what the students said is important. Each day, two students are assigned as raters. Their job is to monitor the class - including me - based on how well we are upholding our contract. At the end of class, I ask the two raters to discuss their observations and agree on a rating (0-10 with 10 being perfect). Once they share the rating, I always as them to share with us what we did well and what we can improve on to increase our rating next time. I am always surprised at how honest and fair the students are in rating the classes.
I'm very excited about using FlipGrid to build relationships as well. It seems like a safe, online space that allows the students to share their ideas/thinking and to respond to others through video.