Friday Five Classroom Community Building Activity
Building relationships with students in your classroom may be the most important part of teaching and there are so many great community building activities out there to help build a positive classroom community. This Friday Five activity, which I started using with my middle school math students, has been a great way for me to get to know my students and for students to get to know each other. It is easy to plan and can be used with in person or digital students. I personally use this with my virtual students that I teach.
What is the Friday Five Community Building Activity?
The idea for this relationship building activity is really simple. Essentially, the Friday Five just means setting aside five minutes every Friday during class to get to know each other. For my first several weeks, I used the free Wheel of Names site to create a random wheel of get to know you questions. Here are a few that I have used.
Would you rather be invisible or be able to fly?
Who is your favorite superhero?
Do you have any pets?
Do you play an instrument?
What is the farthest you have ever traveled?
What is the weirdest thing you have ever eaten?
What is your favorite food?
Would you rather eat cheese or cookie dough?
What is your favorite hobby?
Would you rather play or watch sports?
It was literally that easy and has created a fun atmosphere in my virtual classroom to end each week. Creating a new copy of the wheel for each of your classes is helpful, so that you can remove each question after each specific class answers it. If you sign into the Wheel of Names site with your Google account, it allows you to easily save and name specific wheels.
In addition to starting the Friday Five, I have also found math games to be an effective way of building relationships, making math fun, and creating a positive classroom community, while also keeping the focus on math skills. Games such as the dividing fractions Fraction Frenzy game below can be a great way to engage students while also building that positive classroom culture. This one now includes a digital Google slides version as well.
To find out more information about some of the different math board games I have used with my math students, you can read about these printed and digital Google slides math games for middle school.