Telling the Students

To jumpstart the month of December, read the book Kindness Counts by Brian Smith. This story chronicles a young boy's experience with random acts of kindness and how his feelings about kindness changed the more he saw and participated in kind acts around him.

For many of our students, this was the first time they had heard the phrase random acts of kindness. How was this different than just being nice? Why was it important to do intentional and random acts of kindness? These questions sparked conversation between students as we delved deeper into this mindset of being kind to others.

Due to a fire drill, our lesson was cut short, but we had just enough time to unveil our main project: Each student would receive a $10 bill to cover the costs of doing a random act of kindness for someone else!

Oh, if you could have only seen their shocked faces and squeals of disbelief!

"Wait... what?"

 "Did she just say..."

 "You mean REAL money?!"

Mrs. Cross and I delightfully replied, "YES!" We explained that the Hanover Education Foundation had awarded us with funding so all the students in our class could create projects of kindness, then share what they had done. The children were SO excited; they couldn't wait to get started!

We sent a formal letter home to parents explaining our purpose, including a space at the bottom for photo permissions as we share our projects in person and online. Less than two weeks later, we had 100% parental support of our project! JOY! We look forward to seeing our students shine with their creative kindness!

Kindness Journals

Today we officially rolled out our kindness initiative in Mrs. Cross' fourth-grade class! We began by reading Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts. This story, about a boy who wanted the same shoes his classmates wore, resonated with many of our students.

Following the story, we had a great discussion about the feelings people have when they want something they can't have, and how those feelings change when someone does something nice. We asked our students, "How do YOU feel when you receive an act of kindness?"

Students responded with "good" and "great," then we asked them to dig deeper. "What do those words mean? Are there any other words that might better represent the feelings you have?" Oh my goodness! The adjectives tumbled out of our students like rolling rapids! Look at all these awesome descriptors our students shared:

One student replied, "bad" and we asked him to tell us more. "I feel bad when people are nice to me, because I feel like I have to do something nice right back. It feels bad to receive kindness and not do something in return." This is was a very insightful response from a nine-year-old! We discussed how kindness does sometimes makes us feel odd for several reasons: we're aren't used to receiving kindness from others, we don't know what to say in return, we feel like it's wrong to take something from someone one else without an even exchange. We decided the word "uncomfortable" best described this feeling, so we added it to our list.

Next, we created Kindness Journals using composition notebooks and decorated them using markers, tagboard, and tape. The students allowed their creativity to shine as they designed their book covers.

Since today is Friday, we created a #FlyHighFri section in our Kindness Journals to keep a running list of any kind acts we see and do on Fridays, which we will share throughout the year with our classmates and on Twitter.

Students also applied this concept of kindness to their writing as they replied to a #FlyHighFri prompt in their Google Classroom:

It's such a joy to see our students helping each other in class and sharing their experiences with kindness. We have lots of activities planned this year to create a culture of kindness at our school and today was just the beginning! 

A special thanks to the Hanover Education Foundation for funding this grant proposal, "A Passion for Kindness." We can't wait to showcase all the ways our students can be kind to others!

International Dot Day

Today I visited with two teachers celebrating International Dot Day, based on the children's book The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds.

This story tells the tale of a student who was frustrated by her lack of drawing skills. When her teacher frames the paper containing her single dot, she suddenly has a new appreciation for the boundless limits of her creativity. What a delightful and inspiring message to share with students! 

Mrs. Brown's second grade class listened to the story, then created their individual dots to form a paper class quilt:

(If you'd like to hear the story and see the individual dots created, click here.)

As a culminating activity, Mrs. Brown's class used Skype to connect with Ms. Grimes' class in Asheville, NC to share their dots with each other:

This was the first time Mrs. Brown's class used Skype; it made for an exciting morning indeed! Mrs. Brown and I made sure to wear our "dots" as well:

In Art class, Ms. Candler read The Dot to students then provided watercolors, crayons, markers, and more for students to explore their dot creativity: 

It was such a joy to see all the smiling faces of children enjoying their artwork! A special thanks to author Peter H. Reynolds for sharing his story with the world and inspiring students to shine with their own self-confidence!