Creating Class Culture and Sustaining School Safety Activities

● Between an hour to an hour and 30 minutes:

○ 5-minute introduction about the purpose of the activity followed by…
■ The Big Wind Blows opening, students will stand up if the statement I read is
true for them and remain seated if it is not. This activity would discuss how well
they know one another and hopefully learn something new about their
classmates.
○ First School Culture Building Activity: Community Circles Activity (5 rounds in small
groups, 3-5 students)
■ Elementary and Middle Schools:
● Randomly selected groups
● Talk about traditions that their families do
● Talk about what they enjoy doing, hobbies and what made them like
those hobbies
● Favorite Words and Why
● Talk about the future and what they would want to do
● Personal heroes, people they look up to and why they look up to them
● Talk about what makes them sad or disappointed often (goal to build
empathy and discuss weaknesses and fears)
■ Elementary Schools:
● Talk about strengths and what they are good at in school or outside of
school
● Talk about accomplishments and what they have achieved, this can be
anything they are proud of
● Fifth graders: what they are excited about for middle school and what
kinds of things they would want to try out in middle school
■ Middle Schools:
● Talk about growing up
○ Things disliked but now find interesting
○ What you enjoyed doing when you were in elementary school
● Problems they see in their communities and what they would want to do
to solve those problems
● Eighth graders: what they are excited about for high school and what
kinds of things they would want to try out in high school
○ Second School Culture Building Activity: Collaboration Activity (20 minutes in a group
of 5-7 students)
■ Elementary Schools: Lifeboat Game
● There are fifteen animals on a sinking boat, there are not any life jackets
or other boats nearby, order the fifteen animals from most important to
save to least important to save:
● Animals: Dog, Cat, Turkey, Duck, Pig, Cow, Sheep, Chicken, Bird,
Polar Bear, Donkey, Tiger, Giraffe, Flamingo, Elephant
■ Middle Schools: Train Game
 ● There are fifteen people waiting for a train, but the next train can only
bring seven people, who should be able to board the train early and who
should wait two hours for the next train; all of them are in a rush to get
somewhere.
● People waiting: Pregnant woman, twelve-year-old child, doctor,
politician, teacher, construction worker, pharmacist, a parent, school
principal, police officer, firefighter, a veteran, an engineer, a scientist,
lifeguard
● Anonymous message
○ I will have a list of student’s names and give each student a random name and have them
write a kind 2-3 sentence message to that student on a piece of paper
○ At the end they will pass it to another person who is not the student they received to write
about and add onto the message and they will repeat this one more time for a total of
three, finally, at the end they will hand it back to me and I will read out the message to
the class.
■ Return to their original owner?
● Importance and why we did this (30 seconds to a minute)
○ Building a second family at ________. It is important to have a place where you feel like
you belong because you go to school for twelve, more years which is why it is important
to continue being kind to one another and making school comfortable and safe for all of
us.
○ The question, did it feel good to hear about the things your classmates said about you?
■ Hopefully an overwhelming yes.