About the class

Welcome to Ms. Sokugawa’s classroom.  My classroom is built on the Tribes Learning Model (TLC) that creates a safe and inclusive environment to encourage and enhance learning in each student.  Through Tribes, students gain skills so that they can work collaboratively with others in a respectful and caring environment to reach a particular goal, resulting in knowledgeable, accountable, and responsible individuals.    

Division 20 follow the Tribes Agreements in our classroom, and around the school, to help them “Care for ourselves, care for others, and care for the community”.  The points of the Tribes Agreements include the following.  Our Tribes Agreements are posted up on classroom wall so that the students can refer to them at any time. We all signed it to show how we will be kind to ourselves and to others.  

1.Attentive Listening    

This means that everyone listens with their ears, eyes, and heart.  When we are listening attentively, there is only one speaker at a time, and everyone is looking at the speaker and listening carefully to what is being said.      

2.Mutual Respect  

This means that everyone treats others the way they want to be treated.      

3.Appreciations/No Put Downs    

This means that everyone has a right to feel safe in their learning environment without having to hear hurtful words. This includes words that they used about themselves. 

4.Right to Pass/Right to Participate 

This means that everyone needs to make good choices by thinking of what the repercussions for their actions are before doing them.  No one can make a person learn, or do anything, as that is up to the individual to decide.  However, everyone else has the right to learn with minimal disruptions from others.      

5.Personal Best    

This means that everyone needs to try their best in everything they do by giving their best effort, aiming to learn what is being taught, and not looking for just the perfect score. I also remind them “Don’t stop until you’re proud”. It is listed on my “Quotes” page.    

This photo below shows the ideas the students thought of when I asked them to think about what makes a safe and happy classroom. The students’ ideas are written in orange. Further, this follows the Brentwood Park School motto of “Care for ourselves, care for others, and care for our community.” 

Building Independence

As everyone works at difference paces, it is important that children have something that they can do. In Division 20, each student is given an expressive bag, a math tool bag, a drawing book, and their own school supplies. Using their tools and putting them away is a very important part of building independence. Also, being able to do an activity quietly while others are finishing their work is an important skill to becoming independent. There is also a big classroom library that the students can choose to read quietly.

Tribbles

During community circle, we use the tribbles to help students voice how they are feeling (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). This helps them to strengthen their voice as well as practice attentive listening as the person holding the tribbles is the only person who speaks.

Attentive Listening

We talked about what attentive listening looks like, sounds like, and feels like. We noted that listening means to focus and pay attention to the sounds and words they hear, and we talked about how this skill takes lots of practice.

I Messages

Using proper “I messages” eliminates judgement by not incorporating the word ‘you’ in the statement. It should sound like, “Please stop. I don’t like it when I get ___.” It takes practice to be able to say these statements. The photo below are the ideas the students talked about where things had happened to them. 

Making Good Choices

Everyone feels different emotions and feelings. However, it is important to remember that we have a choice in how we proceed. Stopping to take breaths so we can think are important steps to making good choices. When we skip the first two steps, we hurt others. We used a red heart as an analogy. Saying sorry is the appropriate thing to do but it does not take away the creases.

TAPS  

TAPS (Talking About Personal Space): In our class and school, we need to maintain personal space. Going left to right shows the appropriate level of touch. We should always remember to keep our hands and feet to ourselves (“No touch”), but sometimes we give a friendly touch or invade someone’s space accidentally. As we go further to the right, the touches become less appropriate in a class and school setting.