Do you feel the pressure to add leadership development into your classroom, yet wonder how you’ll find the time? You may be thinking “I barely have time to teach my lessons!”
The good news is, you don’t need to schedule additional time in your classroom for leadership building. You can actually embed it into your current lessons. Here are four classroom leadership activities that take only minutes and can be added on a regular basis to your class:
1. Do a 3-Minute Reflection
Instead of doing a typical warm-up or message to your students at the beginning of class, do a reflective writing activity. Ask your students to spend 2 minutes writing individually on a prompt like, “What is one thing you will lead yourself through today?” or “When did you show self-control this week?” Then, have a few volunteers share what they’ve written.
By having a daily or weekly reflective writing activity, your students will learn to lead themselves first and to think about the leadership of their peers. Self-leadership isn’t a unit you teach in October, it’s a muscle students use every day, practiced through a culture in your class and not just as a stand alone lesson. A few minutes a day of reflective writing will actually do more to develop character in your students than you could get in a long pep talk or assembly.
How to get started tomorrow: Write a reflective question on the board for students to answer individually for 2 minutes and then share for 1 minute. Change it weekly!
2. Do a Peer Feedback Protocol
When your students are sharing their writing or projects and giving feedback to each other, do a protocol such as this one:
“One strength, one specific suggestion, one question.”
Post this and other feedback protocols around the room so they’re visible to your students.
Students need to learn to give and receive feedback to each other as a leadership building practice. Learning it in fourth grade instead of in a first management job is a gift, and starting early can help them appreciate your class as one where cooperation, not competition, is valued. This builds a stronger classroom culture and deeper engagement, where everyone is excited to be.
How to get started tomorrow: Share the 3-part feedback protocol with your students before your next peer feedback assignment and have them use it just once. Then take a minute for them to reflect on how it felt to give feedback.
3. Ask a “Leadership Lens” Question
Don’t feel like you need to teach leadership in addition to your lesson. Sometimes, all it takes is one question. After teaching any part of your curriculum such as reading a book excerpt, discussing an event in history, or a science experiment that went wrong, ask a question like, “Who demonstrated leadership in this and what did it cost them?” or “What would you have done differently if you were responsible for this outcome?”
This can be a valuable tool for embedding leadership into your class without disrupting your lesson plan. The content doesn’t change. The lens does. Your students will pick up a leadership lens when learning about other topics.
How to get started tomorrow: Choose a lesson and write down at least one “leadership lens” question to ask in the last 5 minutes of class. Keep a running list for future questions!
4. Add a Rotating Table Leader
Have a rotating leadership role in your class. Instead of always asking your best students to be in charge, take turns each week so each student gets a turn leading their table. This person can be responsible for making sure materials are ready and that everyone is heard.
This will help your students understand that leadership is influence, not position. Everyone should get an opportunity to serve as your rotating table leader, even the quiet ones. You might find that a student who leads a table well on Tuesday struggles with a worksheet on Wednesday, and that gap is worth noticing.
How to get started tomorrow: Make a poster or chart for rotating table leaders in your class. Choose names for the next activity or lesson.
Small Moments, Real Change
These four leadership activities do not require you to spend more time teaching leadership. They simply ask you to think about your class differently. Instead of seeing reflections, peer feedback, content-specific questions, and rotating class jobs as a waste of time, try seeing these as opportunities to build leaders.
The above are 4 simple leadership activities that can be implemented in your class each week. In fact, this is the same philosophy behind Growing Leaders’ iLead curriculum. By doing these 4 activities consistently throughout the semester, these small moments add up to something bigger in your students’ leadership.
If you’re looking to embed leadership development into your day-to-day lessons, check out the iLead curriculum from Growing Leaders on growingleaders.com. This curriculum is designed to be used in your existing advisory periods or lessons. To learn more about effective classroom leadership activities to use in your classroom, head on over to growingleaders.com and get going today!
