I first heard about Keep the Quote (a community building strategy) while scrolling through Pinterest and came across Miss 5th’s blog. Let me be honest here, I had started pinning ideas for my Grade 6 classroom while still teaching Music at my old school. This was before I even had an interview. In fact, I started pinning ideas the night that my friend told me about this position.
I love teaching Music. Being able to get to know most of the kids in the school and watching them grow from year to year is special. As a Music teacher, you can build relationships with a lot of kids but it develops over time. However, I missed being able to create a classroom community that allowed me to develop relationships quickly. Keep the Quote was a way for me to build those relationships, inspire my students and celebrate their character.
If you check out Miss 5th’s post you can see how she set up Keep the Quote for her class. I had to do mine differently.
1. Inspiration for Keep the Quote
When selecting a quote, I like it to serve a dual purpose. My school board focuses on a different character trait each month like respect, empathy, and cooperation. Our school celebrates those character traits by recognizing a student or two from each class who best demonstrates those traits. I find it hard to choose students. There are so many who show good character so I get my students to do it for me. With at least one of my quotes related to that month’s trait, I can see who is the most deserving.
This is the Keep the Quote I chose for Honesty month
First, I check Pinterest. Pinterest is my friend when coming up with design ideas. You can check out my Keep the Quote Pinterest board to see some of my inspiration. After Pinterest, Instagram is my go-to place for ideas. I usually search #keepthequote and can find many beautiful quotes to choose from. Next, if all else fails, there’s Google. I tend to go here if I want to find a specific quote or topic and then I’ll either do an image search or look on Pinterest again.
2. Practice, Practice, Practice
My lettering skills are basic at best. I can’t use a roll of paper and just write out a beautifully scripted quote like many other Insta teachers. Embracing my desire for perfection, I realized I needed to practice and would use a sketch book to record my initial attempts.
After basically copying other people’s quotes I started to feel more confident in my skills. These hand lettering books gave me some more lettering tips and design ideas. I’m even hoping to use the Hand Lettering for Kids book in my class in September. This way my students can take more ownership over designing the quotes.
3. Keep the Quote Materials
Coming up with the quote can sometimes be the hardest part but once you’ve got an idea you don’t really need anything fancy to start. For the most part, you just need markers and paper.
I used regular Sharpies, fine-tipped Sharpies and 11″ x 17″ paper from the copier room. You can even use Crayola markers or whatever else you have on hand.
Of course, once you’ve created your quote you need to think about how to show it off! To display my Keep the Quote I affixed it to a large clipboard I found at Ikea and showcased it at the front of our room. Other teachers use rolls of paper and attach them to the wall, either with a special holder or with some yarn and a command hook.
4. Using Google Apps to Facilitate Keep the Quote
At the beginning of the week I would share the quote and we would have a conversation about what we thought it meant. Throughout the week the students were reminded to think about which one of their classmates exemplified the quote. By Thursday the students were required to vote. I would encourage them to do it at home using a Google Form but many of them would forget so I would give them a little bit of time during morning work to cast their vote.
Here’s what I included in the Form:
Once most students had cast their votes using the Google Form, I would export the results to Google Sheets to see which student received the most votes and put together a certificate for him/her in Google Slides that included some of their classmates’ justifications for why they deserved to receive the quote.
At the end of the day on Friday (I was not always good at remembering to do this) I would present the “Keep the Quote” poster with the certificate glued on the back to the winner and it would be a chance for us to celebrate him/her.
5. Thoughts for Next Year
My students really looked forward to seeing what the new quote of the week was and a few students brought in quotes of their own. It was also neat to see that one of my students would copy down the quote in her sketchbook each week.
Towards the end of the year, I totally dropped the ball on this despite how much I valued it. I think the weekly quote was too much for me to maintain in the midst of the normal insanity that is teaching.
For next year, I plan to get a whole bunch of quotes done during the summertime to ease my back-to-school workload. I’m also going to encourage some of my students to take over by making Keep the Quote a classroom job where they are responsible for selecting and even preparing the quote themselves.
Check out my gallery of quotes below or follow me on Instagram for more inspiration!
