Getting to know your students and learning more about them, as well as encouraging them to share with you means building a rapport with them. “The positive teacher-student relationship is thus important not so much because this is worthwhile in itself, but because it helps build the trust to make mistakes, to ask for help, to build confidence to try again, and for students to know they will not look silly when they don’t get it the first time.”

– John Hattie & Gregory Yates, Visible Learning and the Science of How We Learn

Finding a way to build that rapport as quickly as possible when you’ve got brand new students who are concerned with looking bad in front of others and who may not entirely trust their teaching staff, is imperative. Doing it through reading may be the best way to accomplish it.

Reading aloud in the classroom is one great way to build a rapport. Get up in front of the class and do a little reading yourself or share a great picture book. Target a couple of students if you like and find a book that may be of interest to them.

Find classroom books to share that dig into the student experience. If you have refugee students in your classroom seek out books that will address the concerns and problems that are seen by the average refugee.

There are many ways to create an atmosphere of trust where your students will feel at ease to ask questions or admit that they don’t know something. There are many ways using reading materials for teachers to help students to feel more at ease in the classroom. You can help them to better understand the new country or the new state where they live or to allow them to better interact with their new classmates.

You can make a big difference in their life or how they see the future in their new class, starting with a book.

 

Article provided by, K-12 Recruitment Group – a recruiting firm focused exclusively on filling K-12 administrative leadership positions throughout the USA

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