Mindy Rudiger

The Advisory Book: Building a Community of Learners Grades 5-9

Independent Study
Summer 2016
Where am I now:
As a teacher, coach, aunt, and person responsible for others, Ive always valued
educating a child beyond the books, teaching the whole child, including their character. As an
elementary education teacher, I learned about the importance of Responsive Classroom and
morning meetings. When I became a fifth grade teacher six years ago, I used morning meetings
to build community within my class. Each year, time was harder and harder to find in the
classroom schedule to implement a morning meeting due to the increasing academic push. The
lack of morning meeting was noticed in the way children treated one another, and the
environment around them. In hopes of building strong, respectful communities within our
classrooms, and teaching students to be responsible citizens, my fifth grade team adopted The
Advisory Book: Building a Community of Learners Grades 5-9 by Linda Crawford.
In the middle of the 2015-2016 school year, I started having daily meetings with my
homeroom students at the end of the day. The routine of conducting productive meetings took
time to establish, but we got to the point where students enjoyed their CPR (Circle of Power and
Respect) time. They knew the routine. They knew and understood the important rules of safety
of respect. They got to know their classmates better, and enjoyed fun activities with them. CPR
was always a special time in the 5R classroom!
The Plan:
Having started with the process last year, I have created a plan for my next steps of
learning and utilizing this beneficial middle school program. First of all, I will create daily lesson

plans to be easily used within the classroom. These plans will include a daily message with
vocab word and definition, greeting, sharing and activity. The user-friendly lesson plans will be
flexible for any teacher to use based on the amount of time they have for the day. Secondly, I
will create a brochure all about T
he Advisory Book to inform fellow teachers about the program,
including informational resources I found within my research of advisories at the middle school
level. Finally, I plan to utilize the meetings I had with my fifth grade team discussing the book.
The collaboration with co-workers was vital in implementing this procedure into my classroom.
This work will create in me a knowledge used to benefit my students now, and within their
lifetimes to come.
Completion of the Plan and Reflection:
With a completed plan in hand, I look forward to using it consistently during the
upcoming school year! First of all, the daily lesson plans will be a user friendly way to
incorporate the strategies from the book into the classroom on a daily basis. I like how the
lesson plans turned out for a few reasons. For one, they are nicely organized. The lesson plans
are labeled number one through 78 so that it is simple to progress as the year continues. I also
like how the cards are organized by the progression of a CPR meeting, starting with the
message, which will be read by students as they enter the classroom and read as a whole
group to begin our meeting. After the message, the group will greet one another, then share,
and finish up with an activity if time allows.
Besides being well-organized, I like how the lesson plans connect to one another.
Throughout the year, the lesson plans cover a progression of units, starting with getting
acquainted, health and well-being, adolescent needs, multicultural understanding, societal
issues, and closing the year. This progression gives students within the advisory the chance to
get to know one another, and feel comfortable prior to sharing personal multicultural information,

for example. On top of that, I like how the message, greeting, sharing, and activity connect
within most days. For example, lesson plan number 36 focuses on the social skill of empathy.
The message for the day tells students what empathy is and gives them a chance to brainstorm
a time when its difficult to show empathy for others. The CPR meeting continues with a gift
greeting, where students choose an imaginary gift to give to another student. The lesson plan
includes a chance for students to share about a time they made someone else feel really good
inside, which is followed up by the acknowledgement buffet activity, where students write kind
words about one another on a paper plate. What a powerful life lesson for ten and eleven year
olds to learn and experience!
Speaking of powerful life lessons, finally, I really like how the lesson plans turned out
because of the meaningful information covered within this time together as an advisory. My
teaching philosophy has always been to teach to the whole child. The life lessons covered
within the plans cover a wide range of important themes vital to a childs success as a
fifth-grader, throughout the rest of their educational years, and beyond into the real world!
Unfortunately, with the current academic push, these life lessons often are pushed to the side
and not taught, and this may be the same situation at home as families are overloaded as well.
The Advisory Book and these daily lesson plans are the perfect way to teach these topics, for
example, social skills, communication, making choices, friendship, planning and organizing,
money management, adapting to change, courage, working together with others, leadership,
and reflecting to celebrate. I truly believe the use of CPR lesson plans will be a memorable,
meaningful way to teach students life lessons.
Im proud of the work I have put into The Advisory Book to help kids build meaningful
relationships at school. With my completed brochure Im able to share my work with other
co-workers who can benefit from the advisories as well, meaning more kids will have the

opportunity to thrive in life. With the brochure, I was able to take the most important information
and place it in a user-friendly guide for teachers, showing an overview of the program, as well
as the benefits. The additional resources section of the brochure lists a few informational
resources I discovered as I researched advisories. This section will give teachers a starting
place to continue to learn more about the importance of advisories.
Finally, the plan was completed by meeting weekly as a fifth grade team to discuss the
book. The calendar shows the time we spent sharing what worked well, and what had not
worked well. This time spent discussing was crucial in developing this program for my students,
and truly developed me into a better teacher.