Building a strong classroom foundation that fosters communication, collaboration, and learning requires connections to be made between you and your students. Getting to know your students and giving them an opportunity to get to know one another is an essential step in developing that foundation. When a student feels like his or her peers and teacher care about them as an individual they will break down barriers and feel more connected to others in the classroom.

The only prerquisites for Making Connections is the courage to be open and trusting of one another. You will simply need time to learn and then conduct these activities to better connect your kids with you and with one another.

The objectives are simple, learn to successfully implement the following activities, which are available on this site and are designed to connect your kids with one another.

• Balance
• Color Wheel of Fate
• Dollar Jump
• Finding Differences
• Haven’t We Met?
• Look at Me
• Match Face
• More, Dig, Dug

As the instructional leader, you are in a position to review, learn, and use the activities found within this module with the kids in your program.

However, if you are participating in the professional development component of this program as well, you will need to complete the EDUCATOR ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY for this module to demonstrate your own understanding and successful implementation of the Connect unit.

Each of the activities found within this unit can take between 20 to 90 minutes to implement with kids depending upon the number of participants you have and whether or not you include the Academic and Social extension activities.