Kindness jars

Spreading Love in the Classroom

I don’t know about anyone else, but January felt like a hard month.  Usually coming back from Christmas break students and teachers are rejuvenated, excited, and ready to tackle the rest of the year.  However, this year we personally have not felt that.  Teachers and students alike came back tired. Anyone who has worked with children (or adults for that matter) in any capacity for any amount of time knows exactly what happens when people get tired…they get crabby!   
    A component of our IntegratED Framework is integrating learning opportunities for students to work on social/emotional skills, as well as academics.  Since January was such a difficult month with attitudes, behaviors, and low morale. Students seemed to be hyper focused on what everyone else was doing wrong in some way. Megan and I decided that we should integrate something into our teaching that would help the students focus more on the positive aspects of one another. 

Last year we did a technology activity that stemmed from those sweet little heart candies, the ones that say “hug me” and “miss you”. We knew this group might not do as well with the technology piece because we haven’t spent much time on google slides with them yet so we went searching. We found a super cute activity that mimics our digital idea. We found it on TPT from Rainbow Sky Creations a Valentines Kindness Bundle. 

Kindness Bundle Link

With this activity, students are to write compliments or kind words to one another on a heart cut out.  We wanted to be able to integrate this social/emotional learning with writing, because at this point in the year students still need that continued practice with writing so this was a perfect fit. 

Together we created a kindness anchor chart. Students brainstormed different words that they might use to describe someone. As a class, we talked about how we know each person differently and that each heart they write for their peers should reflect their unique relationship with them. Then, we shared some ideas with each other and the students started to notice how good it felt to hear someone else speak kindly of them.

As students started to write on their hearts and glue them on the very cute mason jars, I listened to their conversations. The class as a whole was much quieter during this activity but you could hear the joy being spread as they would sneak over to their own jars and quickly read a heart and then get back to work on their friends. 

The focus on these social/emotional skills and building positive relationships with one another didn’t come with an attached standard. The area in which these students needed help with wasn’t a specific standard that we needed to cover for any state tests.  However, our students needed guidance to find joy and spread kindness.  Our world right now is filled with so much negativity.  We need to show students how to be a light to others and how kindness can make change. ​

This very simple activity allowed students to work on their handwriting, spelling, writing conventions, and fine motor cutting skills but more importantly it gave students the opportunity to speak kindly about someone, recognize their words matter, show empathy, listen to others, and have a positive attitude. These interpersonal skills (soft skills) are not something we can teach out of a book but we can help build and foster these skills in our classrooms by giving students time and a safe space to work on them. ​

If you are interested in our digital kindness activity check out this blog called " Incorporating Technology and Kindness".

Tech and Kindness

Two teachers for teachers, 
                                     
​                                   Meg and Kara