Creating Community contains chapters on the building blocks for creating an advisory group using Gatherings to bring the group together, Facilitation to build and strengthen advisor skills for leading the group, and Rituals and Routines to establish the group's sense of identity, trust, and cohesiveness.
The DVD has reproducible PDFs with a scripted professional development guide and accompanying PowerPoint, videos of real advisories in action that align with the chapter, a reproducible PDF with an annotated guide of facilitation tips and strategies for advisory, sample advisory session plans, activities, handouts, and more.
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Chapter 1 - Gatherings: Gatherings are the cornerstone of creating community in advisory. Gatherings allow the individual to have a voice and the groups to develop a shared identity and a sense of connectedness. Gatherings, especially at first, must be skillfully facilitated in order to overcome initial pushback from students. This chapter explicitly identifies key strategies, techniques, and ideas for overcoming potential challenges. We also acknowledge that for many secondary teachers, facilitating gatherings might be stepping out of their comfort zone. That's why we deliberately show a wide range of gathering types and formats so that advisors can find their own style for connecting and creating community.
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Chapter 2 - Facilitation: Advisory, just like an academic class - or a professional development session - requires effective facilitation in order to maximize productivity and achieve the goals and outcomes. This chapter is designed to identify facilitation strategies that are basic to all good instruction and to highlight techniques that are particularly suited to advisory and small-group discussions. At Engaging Schools, we often find that teachers with strong facilitation skills are successful advisors; furthermore, developing the facilitation skills of an advisor positively impacts subject area instruction.
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Chapter 3 - Rituals and Routines: This chapter provides an opportunity for advisors to think about and discuss the role of rituals and routines in creating community. There are foundational rituals and routines that have a deep impact on students feeling safe, secure, and confident in an advisory or classroom setting. Students come to expect and depend on the rituals and routines identified, which has the potential to result in a high-functioning group of learners - a group that will come to support each other and their advisor. Partnering with students on developing rituals and routines will build their commitment in honoring them.
Secondary schools / One DVD / ESR / ISBN 9780942349306
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A video excerpt from this segment can be seen here.
