Using Reading Wellness to Build Classroom Community: An Instructional Path

The allure of a fresh start makes back-to-school one of our favorite times of the year. With new students comes new perspectives and new ideas that infuse energy into our teaching. Recently, we have found ourselves thinking a lot about what it takes to create a classroom culture that supports teaching and learning, and much of the work of building classroom community happens in the first few weeks of school. In Choice Words, Peter Johnston (Stenhouse, 2004) talks about one student finding a book and thinking of another student who would really like it. Connections such as these are our goal for classroom community, as classrooms become places where students know each other well and support the joyful learning of their classmates. We encounter similar experiences when teachers use the “Heart, Head, Hands and Feet” (HHHF) graphic organizer to let students share what they love at the beginning of the school year.

In one first-grade classroom, after completing their HHHF graphic organizers, Junior went to a circus. He returned to school eager to tell to Mikele, who wants to be a gymnast, that she “should read about trapeze flyers because they are like gymnasts.” Junior was not only thinking about what he loved and what he wanted to spend his life doing, but also about Mikele (and all his other classmates). In fact, finding books for friends to help them read and learn about their interests becomes part of the classroom culture when we nurture “reading wellness.”

While we think it is still important for students to engage in traditional community building activities, such as bringing in pictures of family and drawing self-portraits, we find that the best way for students of any age to build community and become connected to each other is to do substantive work together. The six lessons in Reading Wellness, spread across the early weeks of a school year, can bind students together in powerful ways. For those of you who are interested in teaching the Reading Wellness lessons at the beginning of the year this year to establish a reading and writing community, we have sketched out the following five-week lesson map (below).