Inspiring Teamwork

This year, I made a list of goals for the first few days of school!  Of course, rules and procedures were on the top of my list!  Those procedures are oh so important with my little firsties!!!  

We have definitely been doing a lot of work with rules and procedures these first few days; however, we have also spent a lot of time getting to know one another!  I also wanted to be really specific this year when teaching my students whole body listening, how to treat each other with respect, and other social skills that are so important but yet not part of the core content...ha!

**I especially wanted to teach my students to be good team players and how to work in a group.** If I'm being honest, I just didn't spend enough time teaching group/teamwork expectations last year!  I made up for it this year with an entire day dedicated to teamwork!!!

First, we read Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns About Sportsmanship: Winning Isn't Everything.

*Y'all, I just love all of the Howard B. Wigglebottom books! In my classroom we have been reading a different Howard B. book each day, finding the central message, and then learning to apply the message to our own lives.  It's been a lot of fun, and very meaningful!*

So..after reading this cute story, we determined the central message and added it to our anchor chart.

We then completed this printable.

After working together to create a list of rules..... (We later had to add, "Clean up your mess!!!")

Of course, we HAD to work as a team....

My kiddos had a blast making towers with toothpicks and marshmallows. I enjoyed watching them interact with each other!

After all of the fun, we made these cute soccer balls! They had to list five rules for working in a group and describe how they were team players.  I LOVE their cute pictures!!!

During math my students completed these "silent" puzzles that I got from Amy Lemons!  Amazing!!!! It was so much fun watching them communicate as a team without talking!!!!

You can find those HERE

And that's it for my day of teamwork!  You can find all of these activities in my Howard B. Wigglebottom unit HERE. What do you do to inspire teamwork in your classroom?