Creating a Welcoming Classroom All Year

Before you show the video clips, tell the students what you want them to notice about how the characters interact with each other. Write these on the board:

• How does the main character feel about being in a new community? 
• Describe how other people reacted to the new person. 

After watching each individual clip, have students turn and talk with a partner about what they noticed. Invite a few students to share their observations.

Introduce the Venn diagram to your class. In pairs, have students complete a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting characters from the different video clips. For younger students, the teacher will complete it with the whole group. Encourage students to focus on how the characters feel and interact with each other and not on differences such as boys/girls, people/animals. For younger students, complete one Venn diagram as a whole class.

Day Two

Say, “Yesterday we watched video clips and talked about what it felt like to be in a new community. Today we are going to continue that discussion by reading the book The Day you Begin by Jacqueline Woodson. While you are listening to the story, I want you to notice the way the characters feel at the beginning of the story and how they feel at the end.

Pause on the page that says, “There will be times when the world feels like a place that you’re standing all the way outside of.”  Have students turn and talk with a neighbor about what the author means by this sentence.

In the story the author challenges us to share our stories. Ask students, “What does she mean by sharing our story? How can we share our stories with each other?”

Say, “The beginning of the school year is such an exciting and scary time. We all have a part to play in the kind of classroom community we want to create. We do this by sharing our stories. We create our classroom community together through all our sharing. But what if someone joins our class later in the year. How might they feel?”

Brainstorm together ways that they can make the classroom feel welcoming to a new student. Some examples: sitting with them at lunch, inviting them to play at recess, reading the book “The Day you Begin” with them. 

As a class, they will create a classroom coupon book to give to someone who is new to the class (or school) as a way to welcome them into the classroom community. Distribute one classroom coupon to each student. Have each student complete one coupon and decorate it. Collect the coupons, put them in "books" and save them give to new students later in the year.