Teachers have long known that feeling safe and secure in school helps students focus their energy on learning. And the research bears that out: A 2018 study found that when teachers deliberately foster a sense of belonging by greeting each student at the door of the class, they see “significant improvements in academic engaged time and reductions in disruptive behavior.”

This post outlines ideas from teachers for ensuring that every student in the classroom feels like they belong.

Some of the activities included take less than five minutes. They’re divided up among the grades, but many can apply across all of the years from kindergarten to 12th grade.

The virtual field trips on this site include:
The Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, Ontario
Iqaluit, Nunavut – The Canadian Arctic
Farm Tours
Canadian Museum of History
The Royal Tyrrell Museum

"5 kindness activities for kids to help you build emotional intelligence, encourage kindness, and to help build connections. They are a mixture of online activities and good old-fashioned printables that can be sent home if required.

FREE and Editable Kindness Checklists
Family Kindness Ideas Poster
Kindness Coloring Pages
Hug Coupons
Compliment Coupons"

A student’s sense of belonging can come from connections with both peers and adults. This downloadable guide includes five strategies for building strong relationships with students and creating a positive school culture where everyone feels they belong.

*Activities & Templates are provided!

Some unique ways to get to know your new crew of students at the start of the year!
*surveys
*geeky show and tell
*try a maker project to learn their creative process
*scavenger hunt
*find out what they want to learn with a student leadership team
*tap into sense of wonder

Culture is crucial. Teachers want to build it in the classroom. School administrators want to build it in their schools. How do we build relationships with students, set standards, and make school a place where students want to be?

The classroom is a good place to start. This video shares 5 ways to build school culture with your interactive display.

Samsung has a fantastic interactive display called the Samsung Interactive Pro. This is the tool being used in the video, but the same strategies can be used with any interactive display device.

Here are the 5 ways to build school culture with your interactive display:
#1 - Classroom Rules and Norms Brainstorming Session
#2 - Get to Know You Unboxing Video Activity
#3 - Create a Digital Appreciation Board
#4 - Create a Class Banner or Quilt
#5 - Do a Digital "What Do You Remember" Activity

Leading museums share their collections through virtual, augmented and mix reality.

Bringing the arts to life through virtual, augmented and mixed reality, Boulevard is reshaping the landscape of storytelling and revolutionizing the way the world looks at art and culture.

The "Educate" and "Experiences" tabs are a great place to start.

There are full lessons in here under "Educate"!

Located in Greece, the Benaki Museum features European and Asian pieces of artwork dating all the way back to prehistoric ages. In addition to having a massive collection of art you can explore virtually, the Benaki also offers audio tours for several of their larger exhibits.

Character Playbook is an innovative digital course that uses engaging strategies to educate students about cultivating and maintaining healthy relationships during their critical middle school years. Comprised of six lessons that cover key concepts around positive character development, social-emotional learning (SEL), and building healthy relationships, Character Playbook allows students to engage with real-world scenarios, including examples of bystander intervention, resolving conflicts, effective communication, and positive relationships.

This Course Covers
Analyzing Influences
Understanding & Managing Emotions
Communicating Effectively
Resolving Conflicts
Stepping In
Making Decisions

Introduce core SEL competencies to teach students how to practice compassion and empathy, identify emotions, and exercise growth mindset.

Compassion is an important social-emotional skill that begins to develop in early childhood and is essential for lifelong health and success. Learning compassion increases a student's sense of wellbeing and improves the learning environment for all learners. By developing empathy in children, educators lay the groundwork for long-term understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion in the classroom(opens in new tab) and in life. Compassion education is important(opens in new tab) because it helps to build key social-emotional learning competencies, such as:

- development of the understanding of self
- social awareness, and
- relationship skills

With interactive online activities and robust offline lesson plans, The Compassion Project provides invaluable resources for teaching empathy in the classroom. The Lower Elementary Compassion Course has three online lessons; Compassion Playground, EmpathEyes, and Mindful Maze.

Sun West School Division: To access The Compassion Project: Lower Elementary, log into EVERFI through your clever account.

"The Compassion Project is a web-based learning platform focusing on social and emotional learning (SEL) strengths like compassion and empathy. It begins with a tutorial, which students can always access by clicking the help button in the upper left corner. Each lesson starts with a pre-quiz to assess what students already know. After that, a bright and colorful two-minute video with cartoon characters describes the topic for the lesson. Four characters (Tye, Brandon, Alex, and David) narrate the videos in story format. After the video plays, there are reflection questions in the format of a text messenger app that students can click to answer. Characters introduce the SEL skills by describing what the skill (e.g., compassion) looks, sounds, and feels like.

Each skill has three activity lessons. For compassion, students identify when someone needs help and learn how to act with kindness. For empathy, students "see" life through the perspective of different characters. For mindfulness, students practice a breathing technique. Teachers can then provide debriefing and offline extension activities.

The teacher dashboard allows instructors to manage students, add classes, and re-teach when needed. Quiz grades are automatically uploaded and students can access their score by hovering over each lesson." (Common Sense Media)

Sun West School Division: To access The Compassion Project: Upper Elementary, log into EVERFI through your clever account.

Immerse yourself with a team of scientists, climbers, and Sherpa guides as they embark on an expedition that will help define our understanding of high-mountain environments. Experience the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition, which was not simply a climb of the mountain, but a perilous adventure to learn how climate change is impacting the highest place on Earth.

This virtual field trip embedded within a Nearpod VR lesson uses real-world examples of geometry to help students analyze and design physical spaces.

As with all of the Nearpod VR lessons, this virtual field trip includes a teacher guide and student resources.

Students can practice matching words to the correct definition, and donate rice at the same time.

For each correct answer, the United Nations World Food Programme donates 10 grains of rice to a country in need. How’s that for combining word learning with social goodness? When a student plays, there is a visual display of rice (see image) which is added to a bowl each time the student makes a correct response.

Free Rice includes subject area lists in Geography, Science, Math, and others. It is leveled so students can play at just the right level of challenge for them.

If you have an error message just copy and paste this url into your browser: https://freerice.com/categories

These websites/apps for cultivating compassion are completely free! Teaching ToleranceThe WondermentThe Compassion Project Learn Storm SDG's in ActionCharacter Playbook Story Corps Sit with Us The Harry Potter Alliance Liyla and the Shadows of War 

This mansion-turned-museum (and research center) recently had renovations done, so they were already prepared for virtual museum viewing. Click your way through this interactive map for a tour of the beautiful building and collections of art from the likes of Bellini, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and more

Google Arts and Culture is a massive collection of videos and images of cultural artifacts from over 2,000 museums around the world. You can explore places around the world and gather vetted resources for lessons and activities for your classroom.

There are many things you can do with web version but there is even MORE to explore when you download the Arts and Culture App available for Android and IOS.

10 Things you can do with Google Arts and Culture: (plus much more!)
1. Explore pocket galleries
2. Color famous artwork
3. Take an art selfie
4. Play in a blob opera
5. Go on a Google Expedition
6. Do the cultural 5
7. Take an (augmented) reality check
8. Zoom in on art
9. Grab a lesson plan
10. Try a crossword puzzle

Street View Treks gives a first-person view to some of the most spectacular locations in the world, from Mount Fuji to the Grand Canyon to the Taj Mahal in India. Check out the maps, 360 panoramic images and videos.

This collection of images was part of the first group of 360 images added to Google Maps. You can explore more 360 views through the Google Maps Street View collection.

Great Lakes Now brings along students on a virtual field trip to learn more about the importance of coastal wetlands, the danger of algal blooms and a deep dive into lake sturgeon.

This experience is targeted for 6-8th grade, but is certainly not limited to this age group.