I have been waiting to teach Habit 6 to our fifth graders because team building activities are my favorite activities to do with groups of kids! Habit 6 is all about the we, not the I.
Together Is Better:
I value other people’s strengths and learn from them. I get along
well with others, even people who are different than me. I work well in
groups. I seek out other people’s ideas to solve problems because I know
that by teaming with others we can create better solutions than anyone
of us can alone. I am humble.
To begin, we each did a personality assessment that I found available to download here. Students rank themselves on the qualities they feel are most important to them across each row. It is important to learn about your own strengths and weaknesses so you can function best in a group. It is also important to learn about your group member's strengths and weaknesses so you can function best in a group.
After we all figured out which "fruit" best described our personality, I told them which fruit they would be paired up with for a group challenge. They read through their partner's descriptions to think about ways that would improve their teamwork and communication skills. Then I introduced the challenge...the LEANING TOWER OF FEETZA!
I found this free activity on a great website filled with team building activities, Playmeo. I typed up a quick synopsis to explain the goal of the activity, and with such a simple task (or so we all had thought), I set them off to start right away!
Hilarity ensued, conflict ensued, problem solving ensued, chaos ensued! We all had a really great time and an even better debrief session on the challenge, on synergizing and on how knowing more about ourselves can make such a different in our everyday interactions with others.
Lee Elementary will be participating in The Great Kindness Challenge this week, Jan 26-30. This is one week dedicated to creating a culture of kindness
on campuses nationwide. Last year 1,099 schools participated! Lee
Elementary is proudly participating in this proactive, positive bullying
prevention initiative!
All students will receive a Great Kindness Week
checklist with 50 kind deeds. Please encourage your child to complete
the checklist to show the world that kindness matters. If your child
completes their checklist by Friday, January 30th, have them turn it
into Ms. Sepp for a special surprise.
During guidance lessons we will be reading What If Everybody Did That?, The Invisible Boy or Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed to spur our conversation about kindness and paying it forward.
Then we will watch some inspirational videos...
Here is a glimpse of the many amazingly kind acts that happened throughout the challenge week:
We had 100% participation and ***63 students*** complete the entire 50 kind act challenge, designating Lee Elementary as a 2015 Kindness Certified School:
During the week of January 18-22, Lee Elementary will be celebrating kindness and observing No Name-Calling Week. No Name-Calling Week was inspired by the popular young adult novel entitled The Misfits
by popular author James Howe. The book tells the story of four best
friends trying to survive the seventh grade in the face of all too
frequent taunts based on their weight, height, intelligence, and sexual
orientation/gender expression. The friends create a new political party
during student council elections and run on a platform aimed at wiping
out name-calling of all kinds. The No-Name Party in the end, wins the
support of the school's principal for their cause and their idea for a
"No Name-Calling Day" at school.
In classroom lessons we read The Name Jar written by Yangsook Choi. In the story, a new student moves from Korea to the United States and is teased about her name, Unhei. To avoid the teasing, Unhei decides that she will pick another name instead, and the students in her classroom start offering up many suggestions. Will she keep her own unique name or change it? Check out the sweet story to find out the ending.
After discussing the importance of our names, we had a snowball fight. Yes, you heard me right! Each student received a piece of white paper and folded it into 4 equal parts. In each box we wrote about something different that had to do with our names:
- Do you like your name? Why or why not?
- Do you know why you were names this? Explain.
- If you could pick any name for yourself, what would it be?
- What does your name mean?
They didn't include their own names on their paper to make the snowball fight extra tricky. They crumpled up their papers and on the count of three threw them around the room. Each student found a different snowball to open up and try to figure out who's owner it was from the clues inside. Once they found their match they discussed what they learned about each other.
The second part of the activity came in a subsequent lesson, and was initiated by our 6th graders in the No Place for Hate Coalition. As one of our projects for No Place for Hate, the 6th graders came up with a thoughtful project that coordinated with No Name-Calling Week. Each student would receive a small mosaic tile. They would write hurtful names they have been called or mean words that affected them with sharpie all over the colored tile. This would help to heal ourselves by removing the horrible memory of its existence from inside our heads and placed visually onto the tile. Here are some samples from different grade levels:
***STAY TUNED!***
The tiles will be crushed, smashed and hammered into little broken pieces destroying the power these harsh words have had on us. Then, with the tiny pieces left, they will be crafted into a hopeful mosaic art piece to be hung in the hallway at Lee - representing the positive outlook we have going forward at our school.
We, as adults, easily get lost in our daily to do's and prioritize everything but ourselves. When was the last time you did something selfishly for yourself?
Our sixth graders are feeling the weight on their shoulders with middle school applications, schoolwide projects, science fair and standardized testing just to name a few. After a relaxing winter break I thought it would be the perfect time to help our sixth graders recognize what they selfishly enjoy and then sprinkle more of that into their stressful lives.
I first shared the ways I take care of myself with this simple picture:
Then I opened up the discussion for them to start sharing the things they enjoy. We used a simple graphic organizer that I made in Microsoft Word (you can download it here) to list out ways we can slow life down and show ourselves some love. I separated the ideas into 3 main categories of self love: our mind, our body & our support system.
Each month at Lee Elementary we highlight a different positive character trait. This January we are learning about PERSEVERANCE. In addition to daily morning announcements about the topic, I try to incorporate the character trait into my guidance lessons. This week in kindergarten we read The Dot by Peter H Reynolds. This is a beautifully and simple story about Vashti, a young student that feels she is not an artist. With a simple kind act from her art teacher, Vashti exudes perseverance and even pays it forward at the end of the story by inspiring another student.
Perseverance is not the easiest word for a kindergartener to say, so we broke it up into parts before we learned what it meant. Sometimes we feel that something is too difficult for us to do and we want to give up, and having perseverance means that we don't give up. We keep on trying and working toward our goal, even when it gets difficult. In the story Vashti starts small with just a dot on her paper. She showed perseverance when she didn't give up, and eventually she had her own art show. I had students watercolor their own "dots" (or whatever they chose to paint) to show that they have to strength to keep going even when it might seem hard.
