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Community Circle

By Heidi Blokland

Once a month we have a Fab Friday, a day where we dress up and enjoy doing things together as a community. This year we decided to end our Fab Fridays with a Community Circle.

We have divided our entire student body into cross grade groups called Kingdom Building Groups. Each group has a Grade 8 student leader. At 3:10 today we gathered in the gym in our Kingdom Building Groups.

Our topic today was: recess! Recess is a favourite time for many students and usually it is a lot of fun.

But sometimes it isn’t.

Today we discussed some questions:

What do you like to do at recess?

  • hockey
  • play in the rock garden
  • soccer
  • play with friends
  • forts
  • have fun

Then we asked 2 more questions:

  • Why is recess fun?
  • What can we do to make recess fun for everyone?

As the students worked in their Kingdom Builder Groups, here are some of the things they came up with.

Why is recess fun?

  • You get a break from school work
  • You get to be outside
  • You can move around
  • Everyone gets to play
  • There is lots to do
  • You can build things
  • You can play in the snow
  • You can play with others

And then the students worked on coming up with ways for recess to be fun for everyone.

  • include everyone
  • play with people who are alone or sad
  • share and take turns
  • make fair teams
  • play with people who are not in our class
  • make agreements
  • let everyone play
  • encourage and help others
  • encourage joy

Wow! What great work by our students, coming up with ways to build our school community by making sure that recess is fun for everyone. We are learning that it takes hard work to build community. Today the students worked together, listened to each other, and came up with great suggestions to help make TCS an amazing school!

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