Cooperation in the Classroom!

I cannot tell you how much my Kinders LOVED this lesson on "cooperation" and "teamwork."  (I think the Tug-O-War activity had something to do with it!)  Read on to find out what we have been up to!

Each Wednesday after recess, we have a Classroom Meeting.  (The last two years, this was called our Bully Prevention Meeting, but that mindset did not work with my Kindergarten students.  I have really changed my focus this year and it is going well!  Conflict management and team-building is more effective with my kiddos, I have learned.)  Anyway, this is what the lesson looked like:

1 - I borrowed a strong rope from our gym teacher and cleared a lot of space in our classroom.  Then, I called up two small groups to play Tug-O-War against each other.  I was smart about the groups that I called because I wanted to make sure there was never a winning team, so I made sure their sizes and strengths were about even.  Of course, we had several rounds of Tug-O-War because everyone wanted a turn.  At the end of each round, I asked:  "Was there a winner?"

2 - The students really got excited when I told them their goal was to WORK TOGETHER AS A TEAM (or in other words, COOPERATE) in order to beat Mrs. Unger in a game of Tug-O-War.  They smoked me!!  Of course, I asked:  "What happened when you work together?"  WE BEAT YOU, MRS UNGER!!  :)

3 - I then lead a discussion about what happened during those rounds of Tug-O-War.  We related those ideas to real-life. = It is easier to get a job done when we cooperate and work together as team.

4 - I read aloud and lead a discussion about The Great Big Turnip also called The Enormous Turnip.  This is the version we read and it worked very well, especially because we have a Big Book version in our classroom:



5 - Finally, we made this bulletin board display.  Cute, huh!?  It was easy...the students colored and cut-out the person outline, so that it looked like themselves, and then they taped it to the butcher paper.

This is Room 105 cooperating and working together as a team to pull out the turnip!  I wrote the header - "Room 105 knows that cooperation is the key to success!"

Here is a close-up of a few of the people and the turnip.

How do YOU teach cooperation and teamwork in your classroom?!  I would love to hear about it!

Thanks for stopping by!  :)