Relationship builder

Get to know your students with positive personal questions to help develop bonds
What are they:

Relationship builders enable teachers to better understand their students as individuals. 

This improved understanding creates a bond of trust between teacher and student, with teachers demonstrating they are invested in each student as a person. This creates the best foundations for learning, allowing students to feel a greater sense of comfort and even vulnerability in their learning environment.

Relationship builders provide an opportunity for students to share something that makes them proud, happy or excited. This exchange humanizes the relationship between students and teacher, and using technology enables students to be truly authentic in their responses.

Positive teacher-student relationships promote a sense of belonging and encourage students to participate cooperatively in their learning journey.

Benefits:
  • Stronger bonds between teacher and students creates the best foundation for learning 
  • Create a safe and collaborative class environment
  • Model positive personal and social behaviour through identifying individual preferences and passions
  • Increase awareness of the events, circumstances and motivations that impact each student’s ability to be successful

Example questions:
How does your family celebrate Thanksgiving?
Text response
What’s one skill you have that makes you unique?
Text response
What three words best describe you?
Text response
What’s your greatest strength?
Text response
What's your favorite activity to do outside of class?
Text response
Follow up activities:
  • Given the personal nature of the questions, teachers should be clear very in advance whether they will share the responses
  • If you share responses with the class, pick a few at random and ask students to elaborate on their response 
  • Also, share your own response to the question to humanize your role as their teacher
  • As a teacher you might respond to each student - either with a short comment or reaction - on Ziplet to demonstrate your engagement

A full list of questions you can use in your class can be found in Ziplet’s question library under “Relationship Builders”.

Pro tip:

For appropriate questions, get students to share some of their responses in small groups. This builds a collective investment in the class setting and helps students engage with each other in a positive manner, great for engendering enthusiasm in your classroom long-term.

Access a library of template questions

Ziplet contains over 250+ template questions you can use with your students including the ones used for this check-in.

To access the full library, log in, or create your free account here.

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