Building Classroom Community Through the Use of Puzzles
Puzzles in the classroom
Classroom communities are important. When students feel like they are part of a community, they are much more likely to become active participants in the learning environment. Whenever we think about being a part of a family or community, we think about holidays spent around a kitchen table working on puzzles. The feeling of accomplishing a 1000 piece puzzle over the course of a weekend or holiday break is rewarding and satisfying.
Our brains are hard wired to want to solve puzzles and that’s what makes solving a puzzle so enjoyable and relaxing. Simply put, puzzles are a great tool to bring people together at any age.
If you want to build a classroom community, we highly recommend building a collection of puzzles that your students will be excited to work on as a team. We currently have an extensive collection of puzzles and Rubik’s Cubes in our classrooms. We have even started adding in Sudoko Puzzles into our classes for the students who love a good puzzle but would rather work quietly at their desks.
We know that many of you may be wondering when our students would even have time to work on puzzles since we are busy learning each and every minute of our class period. Since our students are expected to work hard and focus during the two period core class, we give them a four minute “brain break” during the passing periods between our two period core class. This is when many students will gather around the back counter to work on the puzzle or walk around the class solving the Rubik’s Cubes. You'd be surprised how much our students can accomplish in their four minute break!
Also, if your school is anything like ours, there may be a major focus addressing the social and emotional learning (SEL) of your students. Adding puzzles into your classroom and supporting classroom community can be a large contributing factor to the betterment of class community and emotional support.
If you are anything like us, you may be wondering how in the heck you would even begin to finance a collection of puzzles because they are not cheap. Denise had great success with writing a Donor’s Choose grant. She got a giant collection of puzzles and this amazing board to house her puzzles on. Another thing that we tried out with great success was sharing our puzzles. I bought a few and Denise bought a few. When our students solved the puzzles, we swapped.
Still not convinced? We Are Teachers has a great post all about the benefits of using jigsaw puzzles in your classroom from elementary age up through secondary school.
Have you ever tried adding puzzles into your classroom? We would live to hear from you. Comment below or stop by our Instagram or Twitter accounts and say hi!
Until next time teacher friends.
Bottoms Up!
