Lesson 7 The aim of this lesson is to work more with class culture, follow up on the survey, and to round off the series of lessons in Netwerk. All rights reserved. Reproduction of the material without Ventilens written consent is not permitted according to applicable Danish copyright law, © 2017 Ventilen Danmark

Class culture III Contents Here it’s going well! What can improve? What should we be aware of in the future? End of Netwerk’s lesson plan – and now what? 1 min. Go over the program.

Here it’s going well! Write down two things that make [insert the class name] a good class to be in. Preferably concrete examples. 5 min. Ask the students to write down two things that make this class a good and safe class to be in. Ask them to be as concrete as possible, so they don’t just write: ”Everyone is nice,” but get them to concretize, e.g. how ‘being nice’ is expressed in actions or words. The students get 3 minutes to write. When the 3 minutes have passed, you take a round in the class and ask them to share what they have written down. Have the class’s ideals for a good class culture (which they established in lesson 4) with you, and bring it into play if the students name any of the things they have also formulated as ideals. This is so they can also see that they are living up to the ideals they made together. Write the good things up on the board. You end the round by telling what you think the class does well. Try to get some of the other teachers of the class to write down a few things as well, so you can end with telling them what other teachers praise the class for. Now you can bring in the numbers from the survey. See the next slide.

How you answered… Statement ‘Agree’ or ’Strongly agree’ (number) In class, we listen to each other. In class, we speak kindly about each other. In class, there is space for our differences. In class, we are aware of whether everyone in included in the community. In class, we are good at working together. In class, we have good solidarity. 2 min. Use the answers from the survey to talk about the things the students think the class is good at. Change the order of the statements, so that the statements with most ‘Agree’ or ‘Strongly agree’ will be on top. Write in the number of answers – do not change them to percentages. If only two or fewer students have answered that they agree with a statement, you can drop the statement from the list entirely.

What can improve? Big things Small things Easy to solve Hard to solve 15 min. You have just spoken to the class about what is going well. Now you have arrived at talking about the things that could improve. To do that, you must use the ‘problem matrix.’ Fifteen minutes have been set aside to do this. The students begin by getting 3 minutes to each write down one thing (on a post-it note) that they think the class could improve. Again, remind them that they must be concrete. Examples of something that could improve: ”To say hi to everyone in the morning,” ”to eat breakfast together – all of us.” The note is anonymous, so the students should not write their name on it. While the students write, you draw the problem matrix up on the board, so it is possible to put the post-its over it. When the 3 minutes have passed, collect all of the notes. You can spend 2 minutes quickly looking through them to see if any of them are about the same thing and to possibly sort out non-serious inputs. You thereafter choose a note from the pile and read it aloud for the class. You now take a class discussion about where the note should be placed on the matrix (in other words, is it a big or small thing, and how easy or hard is it to solve?). The exercise continues like this until all of the notes have come up – as earlier stated, there may be overlaps or non-serious notes which do not need to come up on the board. When all of the notes have come up, you must again bring in the answers from the survey. This time, the numbers will not come up on the board. You present orally what the students think the class could improve on; the answers for ‘Disagree’ and ‘Strongly disagree.’ The answers from the survey can support what is already up on the board or they can bring new subjects onto the table. If there is something from the survey that many students think the class could improve on, but that no one has written a note about, then you make a note with it and put it up on the matrix. Remember to protect the student(s), so do not say exactly how many have answered, but make general summaries such as: ”Several of you say…”, ”There are some students in class who think that…”, etc.

How do we get better at…? [Insert the chosen 3 to 5 ‘problems’. This is done during the lesson itself] 10 min. When all of the notes have been put up on the problem matrix and you have gone over the results from the survey, you will together with the class choose 3-5 notes that you will try to solve – the challenges that you think it is most important to get a handle on. You then take each ‘problem’ at a time and talk about what it will take to solve it. Write down the students’ answers. You have 10 minutes to go over the chosen notes and talk about how you can solve them. Just as the challenges had to be as specific as possible, as well does the solutions. It is not a solution to say: ”We must become better at saying hi,” but talk about what kind of behavior or which actions it requires to improve. Note: Make a parking lot for the things you cannot solve. Write a ‘P’ somewhere, where there is space, and draw a circle around it. This is the parking lot. If something has been written on some of the notes that cannot be solved on the class level (e.g. ‘longer recess,’ ‘bad food in the cafeteria’), then put them over in the parking lot.

The lesson plan is over – what now? 10 min. The lesson plan in Netwerk has come to a close. Let the students spend a little while talking about what it has been like to participate. It can be nice for you as a school to know how it has been experienced by the students, and it can be nice for the students to get it off their chest, if there is something they have been thinking about. Emphasize that this goodbye is not a goodbye to working with a good class culture – that work will continue for the rest of their time in school (and of course, throughout their work life). Even though the lessons are over, Netwerk is far from over. The community-building activities that the students started in lesson 6 in November will continue the rest of their time in school. It can be a good idea to ask the students how it is going with arranging the community-building activities. Even though the students must be in charge of the activities themselves, they may need you to remind them to follow up on how it is going. In addition, it is also possible to reintroduce the partnerships and partnership groups, if new students join the class.