Building classroom community with reusable Kami templates

Kimber is a Kami Teaching and Learning Coordinator, supporting educators across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and Michigan.

Back to school sets the tone for the rest of the year, and reusable templates can make that first stretch of teaching easier without sacrificing depth. Kimber Coté, teaching and learning coordinator for Kami, walks through a simple three-stage approach: a low-lift intro activity, a fun practice rep to nail down logistics, then a straight dive into content, all without re-teaching routines from scratch.

Using the Frayer model and hexagonal thinking templates from the Kami template library, students interview partners, build shared visuals, and use Kami’s comment tools (including voice comments) to find connections with classmates. Split and merge makes it simple to clone a template for an entire class, and students can only edit their own content, so nothing gets accidentally deleted along the way.

Over a few days, this approach helps students get to know each other, build collaboration habits, and practice academic discourse, all while introducing higher order thinking skills like justification and identifying relationships between ideas. By the time students move into academic content, they already know how to work as a team.

Visit the Kami library for more reusable templates: