In my classroom, we have a community building activity called circle that allows students to learn about each other in a safe, respectful way. This activity allows students be be silly and have fun, but also be more vulnerable in a safe environment. As a class, we get into a circle with our chairs and start with a fun question, such as, “If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?” and then move into more serious topics as the year goes on.
This questionnaire would be given to students within my math class, but this could be edited and given to any subject class. The questionnaire was written with my 8th grade students in mind, but could be altered to any secondary grade. This would ideally be in a 1:1 technology situation.
This questionnaire would be given to students as an introduction to Circle, and would allow students to share what they are comfortable and uncomfortable sharing in a group to me privately. Students have no way to see other students’ answers, so there is not pressure about answering the questions truthfully. I also want to take some of the fun answers from this questionnaire and so the statistics behind it, so students can see similarities between each other.
Always a good idea to introduce students to something new (in this case, circle) in a fun, low barrier way. As an added bonus – you should share the data results with the math class.