Creating a classroom community where students feel safe and confident to learn, grow, and make mistakes takes a lot of intentionality! This is exactly why I created classroom cheers!! Classroom cheers were, hands down, one of my favorite tools for building a positive classroom environment! You might have called them my love language when I was in the classroom. They are an interactive and fun way to encourage one another and help foster a learning environment where individual students are celebrated, confidence grows, and students feel safe to learn and try! From roller coaster to rock star class cheers, there is something for every classroom.
What is a classroom cheer?
Remember those pep rallies we went to when you were in high school? It was an energy-filled day where the cheerleaders or dance team or both would pump everyone up for the big game, or you would celebrate the teams at your high school. Classroom cheers are sort of like little mini pep rallies. A classroom cheer is an interactive and fun cheer to celebrate and encourage students! There is a motion for students where they use their hands or bodies to act it out and cheer words they say as they do the motion!
It is such an easy and fun way to get students excited and engaged in learning! What I loved about my job was that, as a classroom teacher, I had the awesome privilege of being a cheerleader every day in my students’ lives! And by modeling this, students could become cheerleaders for each other too! I honestly can’t have imagined my classroom without them, and know that you and your students will love them, too!! You’ll be amazed by how your students’ participation and motivation increases with each cheer!
How to Use Classroom Cheers
Classroom cheers are so easy to use!! You can include loud celebration cheers or even silent cheers. It all depends on the classroom and students. Here is how I used them in my classroom and some tips on how to incorporate them into your school day, too!
- Pick a cheer to use:
In my classroom, we used one cheer per day. I had one student responsible for choosing the cheer for the day. We used the cheer sticks, which are sort of like cheer flashcards, so the student just picked the cheer for the day and laid it out on the front table.
I know a lot of teachers who also love using the “Cheer of the Day” poster along with the Cheer Cards. Sometimes, students are visual learners, and teachers like to hang the poster near their interactive whiteboards or next to their daily schedule. So, I’ve included both options for you to choose from!
To pick the cheer, I just had the “Substitute Job” student be in charge of it since they would often have days without a job if all of the students were there. You could also make “Class Cheerleader” one of your classroom jobs, and this person will pick the fun cheers for the week. I found a cheer a day to work the best, but you could also choose a different cheer each time you needed to celebrate or do a cheer of the week. There are so many organization options, It’s totally up to you!
- Lead the cheer:
I always saw my job as the teacher to be the head cheerleader because students will take their cues from us! So, when leading the cheer, be sure to model the cheer so that they know how to do it! You will do the motions as you say the cheer.
For example, as the head cheerleader, I would watch for students who were showcasing great kindness or tried really hard on their independent work. It would sound something like, “Nate did a great job on his writing today! Let’s give him the Rock Star Cheer!”
You can do a cheer for one student, multiple students, or even the whole class! It’s totally up to you how to use these cheers, but below are some suggestions on when to cheer!
You can use the classroom cheers after students:
- Do work on the board
- Give an answer
- Show critical thinking
- Share a piece of their writing aloud to the class
- Help in front of the class
- Positive behavior or Good behavior
- Finishing work on a difficult task (when everyone has worked hard, I would say to the class something like: “You all have done such a great job working today! Let’s give everyone a High 5- ”You deserve a hand!”)
- The class will respond by doing the cheer:
If you cheer for a specific student, have everyone direct their cheer to that student. For example, after saying something like, “Nate did a great job on his writing today! Let’s give him the Rock Star Cheer!” the students play an air guitar while saying, “You’re ROCKING it!” This helps build classroom community and create a safe place for everyone to learn and grow.
I’m a big believer that the energy you give our students is the energy you’ll receive in return, so I’ve included some of my cheer tips for you below!
Here are some cheer tips:
- Use a sing-songy voice (think of rhythm and syllables)
- Make it FUN!! (the more fun they are, the more effective they will be)
- The cheers should be taught and modeled before using them. Once the class knows them, you won’t have to model how to do them each time. You can introduce these cheers one at a time before adding them into the container, OR you can put them all in the container and just learn them as you go.
You and Your Students Will LOVE Using Classroom Cheers!
There are so many classroom cheers out there that it can be challenging to figure out just which ones to add to your daily cheer rotation. I created 36 classroom cheers that not only my students and I loved using and are also being used by thousands of classrooms to create a positive learning community!
The amazing thing about classroom cheers is that they help so much with building your classroom community which in turn improves your classroom management! By modeling the classroom celebration cheers for your students they in turn learn to be more positive and look for the good in others too!
Examples of Classroom Cheers
Some of our favorite classroom cheers were the:
- Superhero cheer
- Rock Star cheer
- Dino Stomp cheer
- I Spy Cheer
Here is what other teachers are saying about these cheers:
- “These are just SO fun!! Thank you for creating a resource that adds sparkle to our class meetings and also builds community!” -Denise (Kindergarten Teacher)
- “My students love when I pull out these cheers. They encourage student participation and help students to feel confident and proud of volunteering and answering. It has really helped to strengthen the classroom community. Very cute, very elementary friendly.” -First Grade Teacher
- “Love, love, love this cheer of the day! It makes for a great class community!” -Michaela (First Grade Teacher
I’m so excited for you to grab these Classroom Cheers to use with your students, too!!
- Click HERE for Classroom Cheers
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