I wish I could take the credit for doing show and tell and my classroom, but I can’t. My grade level partner has been doing show and tell all year.  As the year has gone on, she kept sharing little tidbits of the things her students were sharing. It sounded like such a beautiful class community-building experience.

How It All Started

I started to feel guilty for not doing it in my own classroom. Part of me wanted to give students the opportunity to share. The other part of me wasn’t sure if I wanted to give up the time to do it.

Then, I had a student ask if he could share the special Lego car that he built. This was the perfect opportunity to start doing show and tell. 

I told him he could wait until the last day of the week. I committed to trying to do this weekly. That way, I had a plan in place for when the other students started asking if they could share things, too.

For our first few show and tell times, many students wanted to share. Each week as it goes on, less students share each week. They are still excited to do it and excited to hear what their classmates share. All students are not signing up to share every single week. For the most part, they sign up when they have something that they are very excited to show off.

It only takes about 10 or 15 minutes each week and the payoff is so worth it.

Name Change

As students were writing in their agendas that we had show and tell the next day, I asked them if they thought it was cool to call it show and tell. Although that’s exactly what it is, I had the idea to change the name together so that it was “cooler” for grade four students. 

Students made name suggestions and we had a class vote. Our class show and tell is now called bring & inspire and we absolutely love it.

Show and Tell Examples

We have had quite the assortment of different bring & inspire sharings. 

It all started with that one Lego car but many students were eager to share pictures and videos of their pets and bring in some of their favourite toys. Before we knew it we were having presentations about favourite artists like Marshmello, class liturgies (I teach at a Catholic school) and a live cheer routine.

Bring & Inspire is now a part of my weekly classroom routine and I’m not going back. It’s such a good classroom community builder.

Morning Meetings

Another way that I love to build classroom community is through daily morning meetings. Click here to drop your info to get two weeks of morning meetings planned for you!

Do you do show and tell in your class? Comment below and let me know!