Establish a Community of Learning Mindset: Creating a strong sense of community within the classroom is a great place to encourage collaborative thinking and synergistic efforts in Middle School.

1. Ask students come up with words and phrases that DESCRIBE a community of learners. Discuss.
2. Divide class into smaller groups and ask them to create a list of ACTIONS that define strong classroom communities. Come together in a big group and ask each small group to explain their ACTIONS lists. Discuss (and perhaps debate) each ACTION. Emphasize the importance of healthy conflict resolution.
3. Come to consensus on ACTIONS that foster a Community of Learning Mindset.
4. Have students agree on appropriate ways to hold one another accountable for agreed upon

Articles:

• 33+ team building games & exercises for kids
• 12 ways to build a strong classroom community

Fun examples from Edutopia:
Paper Tweets: To build community in her seventh-grade classroom, Jill Fletcher of Kapolei Middle School in Kapolei, Hawaii, created a bulletin board modeled on Twitter. Students use a template to create a profile, and they enlist at least three followers—a friend, an acquaintance, and someone they don’t interact with much.
Group Salutes: A moment shared between two or more students at the beginning or end of an activity, a Group Salute is a teacher-prompted interaction that is a quick, low-prep way to cultivate community. The shared gesture can be physical—like a high five—or social—a teacher could ask students to express gratitude to their group members. There’s some interesting data supporting this idea: Researchers found that NBA teams whose players touch the most early in the season—high fives, fist bumps, etc.—had the best records later for the season.