Have You Filled a Bucket Today?

Throughout the grades we have been reading Have You Filled a Bucket Today? written by Carol McCloud.  This book introduces students to an invisible bucket that you carry with you throughout the day.  The bucket fills up with positive thoughts and feelings through the actions and choices you make each day.  You can fill a bucket when you show love to others, say or do something kind, or even something as simple as giving someone a smile.  You dip into a bucket when you make fun of someone, say or do mean things, or by ignoring others.

Students helped me sort different ideas into something a bucket filler would do and something a bucket dipper would do.  In the younger grades we worked on this together as a class. 

Students extended their knowledge of bucket filling by writing and drawing something they've done to fill a bucket.

In the middle grades we cut out the ideas and glued them into the proper bucket.

 

In the upper grades, this idea was extended through a Bullying Survey.  Students individually went through the survey finding statements to be true or false.  Then I facilitated a whole class discussion on what the truth was.  We formulated a definition of bullying and learned what Austin ISD considers bullying vs just being unkind.  We went through different scenarios using a flowchart to determine if it would be labeled as bullying. 

Finally, we watched Disney's Pixar Short, For the Birds, to examine the different behaviors and classify them as bullying or being unkind.