Building Classroom Relationships with Emojis and Mote

Guest post from Mote Ambassador Leader Brittany Horn, instructional technologist in NISD.
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As educators, one of our primary goals is to create a positive and inclusive classroom environment where students feel valued, connected, and engaged. Establishing strong relationships with our students lays the foundation for a successful year. By combining emojis and Mote, we can engage students, enhance narrative writing skills, and foster a sense of personal voice and belonging. The below “About Me eMOTEji” slides provide a fun and interactive activity for the beginning of the year, helping teachers get to know their students and promoting ownership in the classroom.

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Engaging Students with Emojis: Emojis are a universal language that all students can relate to. These slides offer an interactive activity allowing students to share their summer, favorite activities, & excitement through emojis.

Personal Voice with Mote: Emojis break down initial barriers and are an easy way for students to connect. Mote, then pushes students to explain why they choose certain emojis. Mote makes this activity personal and gets students talking and storytelling! Listening to student created Motes allows teachers to truly learn more about their students in a personal way. Teachers can also revisit these slides anytime throughout the year as a reminder of student interests. 

Strengthening Classroom Relationships: These slides could easily be made collaborative, where each student claims a different slide. This would allow students to hear from others. Depending on the grade level, teachers could change out emojis, or allow students to add their own. By completing this activity either individually, or as a class, students feel seen, heard, and start to make connections with their teacher and classmates. 

Generate Ideas for Writing: Writing effectively is a vital skill for students, yet many students struggle to generate ideas to write about. These slides would be a great precursor to a narrative writing assignment! Students could write about their summer, one of their favorite activities, or what they are looking forward to. They will already have voiced their thoughts aloud, which will make writing about them an easier task. 

Share how you use this template with your students on Twitter or your favorite social media platform! Don’t forget to tag @justmoteHQ