On May 9, 2017, our students had an opportunity to share their kindness projects with their peers, parents, and other stakeholders in our community. We invited everyone at school, putting flyers in mailboxes and sending letters home with students. The laptop lab was decorated for our festive showcase with colorful streamers and balloons with each… Continue reading Kindness Share Fair 2017
This week is our first week back after Spring Break and our fourth graders were ready to dive into creating their Passion Project display boards! After a brief introduction and a display of another class' book projects, we were ready to begin!I'll be honest with you - it was a little bit of mayhem trying… Continue reading Planning Passion
For the past few weeks, our students have been digging deeper into planning their Kindness Passion Projects. Thanks to the power of Google Docs and Google Classroom, our students have been able to brainstorm ideas both in person and virtually as they've collaborated on digital idea sheets shared with small groups.One thing we discovered when… Continue reading When Ordinary is Extraordinary
To jumpstart #RAKWeek17, I decided to give our students a first-hand taste of random acts of kindness. I brought in three bouquets of the most colorful flowers I could find and surprised the students with a Flower Power challenge."You hold in your hands the power to make someone else's day brighter, more meaningful. You have… Continue reading Flower Power
One of the ways we focus on everyday kindness is discovering ways to lift up others, making them smile, changing their perspective. As teachers, we do this in simple ways. We greet our students at the door by name. We share a shout-out of praise for a job well done. We make a point to… Continue reading Words of Inspiration
In December, Mrs. Cross and I were honored by the Hanover Education Foundation for our grant project, "A Passion for Kindness." This annual event spotlights the different grant projects funded for the upcoming year as well as recognizing each school's Teacher of the Year and the district's Teacher of the Year. It was humbling to… Continue reading HEF Celebration Gala
After learning about our random act of kindness project, students were very excited to move forward in the process. The next time we were together, we talked about acts of kindness we had completed on our calendar, then separated into small groups to start our project brainstorming lists.The students came up with so many ideas!… Continue reading Brainstorming RAKs
To encourage our students to share kindness throughout the month of December, we created a Kindness Calendar for them to complete. Each day listed a different act of kindness. The students were excited to cut these out and glue them into their kindness journals and we enjoyed reflecting on what they had done during our… Continue reading December RAKs
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… Continue reading Telling the Students
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… Continue reading Kindness Journals
