respect others and be kind to them even when they are not your best
friend. "Without a sense of kindness, there can be no sense of community"
was my quote. This is how I want my class to be. To be kind, and to
have a sense of community, where everyone cares about each other. I have
had a couple of classes that were like this in the past, and the year was
amazing. So far this year we have had a huge focus on building a sense of
kindness and community in our class. I want a class where everyone feels
safe and liked. Even the novel we are reading right now has a theme of "Being kinder than is necessary", and I want this to be a continual theme in our class as well. I hope that our Wall of Kindness not only models acts and words of kindness, but also brings joy to people when they look at it. Below I will explain the different aspects that make up our wall of kindness and the inspiration for each.
Our Wall of Kindness has been a collaborative effort that demonstrates a lot of what we are learning in our class. In the border you will find acts of kindness, compliments, and pictures of the students in our class. For the acts of kindness, we watched some videos (see the links below) and then brainstormed different things we could do that would make people feel
good. I want my class to go out and do kind things for people within the school and the community without expecting anything in return. If everyone did this, the school and world would be such an amazing place. I love how being kind ties right in with our school’s “3 Things”; I think this is going to make our school the best school in the district.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu9UtVaWYaI&list=PL6E303473F3F9C5DE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwAYpLVyeFU
Another thing you can find in the border is the compliments we wrote to each other. We have talked about giving genuine and sincere compliments to each other and we will be practicing this throughout the year. It is an important skill to know how to give and receive compliments. So often people are embarrassed when they receive compliments and will say something derogatory about themselves or shrug it off. I want my class to learn that the best way to receive a compliment is to just say thank-you. Also, at the age my students are it can be embarrassing giving compliments, especially to members of the opposite gender. By the end of this year, I want my students to feel comfortable giving compliments when they see something kind happen or they like something about a person. I want them to be able to give compliments to anyone in our class, be it a boy or a girl. I was
super proud of my class when I told them who they would be giving a compliment to; not one person complained about their match. This is an amazing start!
The final part of the border was pictures of the students in our class. We watched a video which showed that when people see other people smiling and showing joy, they will feel joy as well. So I asked my students to show their joy when I was taking their pictures. I loved how some of them got a bit silly even. It makes me smile when I look at the pictures. I hope that their positive energy will help lift you up a little too. Here is a link to the video that inspired this idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_XSQfi8cos
For the middle part of our bulletin board, I had my students find a quote about kindness and they had to then blog about what this quote meant and why it is important to demonstrate kindness at school and in the classroom. I am hoping that if our class demonstrates kindness, and models kindness then it will spill over into other areas of the school and then into the community as
well. I wanted to include this technology piece that links to their blogs because our school received a technology grant this year, and my class will be focussing on using it in ways that can enhance what we are doing. I have also used a QR code to link to their own blogs as well. I hope the use of blogs will not only help my students learn about their digital footprint and teach them to use the Internet in positive ways, but also get my class writing.