WE ARE FOURTH-GRADE

 .         .      

As parents and teachers, we understand the critical role that positive relationships and emotional connections play in a child's development. It's those relationships and connections that offer the support necessary for children to develop empathy, a sense of belonging, and a responsibility to themselves and others. This foundation creates a pathway for developing essential life skills (self-regulation, social awareness, and responsible decision-making, to name a few) and to function well in a classroom, the broader community, and in life beyond school. What has become apparent to all of us is that children's limited ability to nurture and develop these relationships and connections during the last two years has, in some way, had an impact on their social and emotional well-being, and in turn, their academic success. 

Despite the challenges of the last couple of years, we now find ourselves with an opportunity to redesign how we can best support our students socially and emotionally and help them establish and/or re-establish positive, fulfilling relationships and connect/reconnect with one another. We've identified a need to address this as a grade level, providing opportunities for students to comingle with other classes and engage with one another in much-needed fun and interactive community-building experiences.

This week's guest bloggers reflect on these adventures and the hope of what lies ahead. Enjoy!

Our community-building experiences are important because the Coronavirus broke up a lot of friendships and we need to reconnect with each other. Some people were able to keep their friends, but some lost their friends or are not allowed to have play dates because of the pandemic. Giving kids a chance to reconnect with each other is really important.   - @Koala333

A positive experience that I had during our last community-building experience was playing the game THIS or THAT. It helped me figure out what other people were like so that I could better connect with them. I made some new friends because of that.   - @WowWriter

These community-building experiences are important because lately, the fourth-grade has been kind of shaky since Covid-19 struck. In first-grade, I had a bunch of friends, but these past two years we haven't seen each other as much as we used to. It will be really great to reconnect with each other.    - @Pickle03

Community-building experiences are important because some people have forgotten that other people have feelings. We can get to know each other better and make some new friends.   - @Kiwi222

There are a couple of things that I hope come out of these community-building experiences. One is for the friendships that have been fractured, due to the pandemic, to be repaired. I know some people who have lost a couple of friends because of Coronavirus and I really hope that those friendships can be repaired. Another thing is for the fourth-grade community to be whole again. For the last two years, each classroom has been sort of isolated, as if they were on their own little planets. We need to bring everyone back together.   - @M&M

These types of community-building experiences are important because since the pandemic started, it has been really hard to create friendships. Group activities can help with this and it's even better since we're mixing up the classes.    - @NonCat

I haven't made new friends since Covid and I would like to. I'm sure the kids who are new to this school would like to as well. Doing these community-building activities will help with that and maybe we can all become friends with everyone.    - @recycle

Our community-building experiences are important because we get the chance to meet new people since it's been hard to see friends out of school or in school during Covid-19. We also get to hang out with new people and with friends you haven't seen in a while.    - @Wolverine12

These community-building experiences are important because there has been a lot of friction between some kids and that friction could turn into bullying, which would be really bad. It's important to put this all to an end and bring people closer together.   - @Moon_Drop

One positive experience from these activities has been meeting new people and getting to know how they think. I hope that this will bring out more kindness and feeling open to others. Our community-building experiences are important because the pandemic has been dragging kids apart and instead we should be bringing them closer together. Friendships should be made instead of broken.    - @Lightning24

Sources: https://edulastic.com/blog/social-emotional-learning/ (Edulastic logo)