Teaching Character Traits & Citizenship

Hello Readers!  I'm Marcie from Sunny and Bright in First Grade.  I am teaching kindergarten again this year which I am thrilled about.  However, I think the first 6 weeks of kindergarten is a lot like childbirth... if you remembered how hard it was you might decide to never do it again! Have you seen this video?  I laugh so hard every time I watch it. THIS is how the first 6 weeks of kindergarten feels!

 

 Don't get me wrong, I love, love, love kindergarten... but I also love October.  It was my 5th year teaching when I realized that October wasn't my favorite month just because the weather was cooler.  October is the magical time when you are suddenly able to look around a kindergarten classroom and see a community of happy little learners.  It is a beautiful thing.  This year I've been waiting with even more anticipation than usual.  I may or may not have had a little chat with my class about how the "October Magic" was going to help them be better listeners this week. 

While I am a believer in "October Magic" I am also a realist. I believe strongly in giving all students a great foundation at the beginning of the year.  I also believe that learning to be kind, responsible, helpful and respectful is something that needs to be taught all the time.  So, in case the "October Magic" hasn't transformed your students into model students and citizens, I thought I would share some citizenship ideas to help you out!

This is a cute little freebie that I created to help my students visualize exactly what respect looks like in our classroom.  It comes with some "Caught Being Respectful" tickets to share with your little ones. 

 

I have found that "setting the stage" for student success is TOTALLY worth the time it takes.  We go over our class rules every single morning.  We take turns leading the group as we call them out and have the class repeat them back.  It really helps us to stay on track.  I use a lot of Whole Brain Teaching strategies in my classroom.  These rules are my version of the WBT rules:

  Rule #6 is my favorite :)

You can grab these FREE rule posters HERE.

Next month I will be starting one of my favorite themes... Veteran's Day.  It sounds like a strange favorite, right?  Well, I wrote all about my deep love of this theme and how I make it meaningful for my students HERE.  This year I am going to combine my Veteran's Day unit with my Being a Good Citizen unit.

I found this unit to be so wonderful for helping my little learners develop their character traits.   It includes close reading articles on things that good citizens do. 

 

We do this sorting activity together once and then I add it to a center.  They LOVE it.  It inspired some great conversations and helped students to really feel proud of themselves.



 

Hopefully, the "October Magic" has transformed your students into model citizens already!  I would love to hear some of your ideas for promoting citizenship and good character with young students.  Please come visit me on my blog Sunny and Bright in First Grade!

 

Personal Space Camp

Happy Sunday, everyone!  It's Lisa from Second Grade Stories coming to you from a VERY rainy New England.  I can't complain though - at least it's not 20 degrees and snowing!  Spring has finally begun to show up around here and nowhere is this more evident than in my classroom... with my kiddos' behavior... argghhh!

 

We definitely have some spring fever going on here and that means it's time to review and role play some social skills again - just enough to keep us going for the next three months.  (Yes, that's right... mid-June is our last day!)  My seconds have been SO all over each other lately - poking, tattling, interrupting... it makes the day so much more tiring and even they are feeling it.  So, I decided to jump right in and help them fix this so we can be a happy and productive classroom again. 
Welcome to

But before I share, let me explain how this all fits in.  (And I apologize for the lack of photos in this post - I'll try to get creative and put some in as much as I can!)  We all know how important teaching social skills is as part of our classroom.  Not only does it help keep things running smoothly during our day at school, but those same skills are an integral part of being successful out in the world.  I have an outline for the year of social skills for us to focus on - things like being a good listener, staying focused on your own work, taking turns and working together.  We focus on one skill for 3 or 4 weeks, doing most of our activities during morning meeting and then reinforcing throughout the day.  The first two months of school focus on:

clipart Krista Wallden - fonts Kimberly Geswein

I have a general plan of when we'll do others, but many times it depends on how things are going in class and what I see a need for.  Like now - we definitely needed to focus on two specific skills again - personal space and not interrupting.  I tackled personal space first, since I thought (hoped!) maybe reviewing that one would have an impact on everything else.  I enlisted the help of our fantastic school psychologist intern and we got to work. 

 

We started by reading this book - it is a must have for any elementary classroom!!! 

Had I known about this book, I would definitely have used this at the beginning of the year.  (Already bought it from Amazon for next year!)  It's all about Louis, who has some issues with personal space (described SO perfectly from a kid's point of view!)  He's been asked to join a group that works on "space camp" - and he's ready to go because he knows a ton about outer space.  Louis is a little disappointed to discover that it's not THAT kind of space being talked about.  But, he learns a lot and even shares what he discovered with his family.

 

After the story and some discussion about what personal space means, we started talking about strategies for knowing the boundaries of your personal space - in line, on the rug, at your table, etc.  We brought out hula hoops for everyone and asked them to sit themselves on the rug, inside their hula hoop, in their own space.  AMAZING!  Kids who usually ended up on top of each other saw that you really CAN fit everyone on the rug comfortably.  After a few more quick activities (stuffing LOTS of kids into one hoop!) and role plays (how do you handle when someone is a "space invader?"), we moved the discussion to how personal space is different depending on the situation.  Sitting at tables means less personal space than a hula hoop, and in line is even less - but we modeled and role-played so everyone had a clear idea of what personal space meant.

 

At the end of the activity, each student received a "personal space camp" award.  Boy did they eat that up!  We told them that meant they knew everything about personal space and now they were expected to show it.  Here's the one I created.  You can click on it to use it with your own kiddos.

I can't say this completely fixed our personal space issues, but it made it easier for students to talk to each other about staying in their own space, using the hula hoop idea.  And it gave us a common language to use in our classroom.

 

Julia Cook, the author of this book, has MANY more great books on social skills that are perfect to use with elementary kids.  I own a ton of them.  They are written in a way that students can connect and some of them have an activities guide to go with them - perfect for classroom ideas.  Visit her website to see all the books she has.

I have also used the book

 

to work on interrupting.  Everyone has SO much to say and it is important for kids to know there is a time and a place for when to share things.  This book gives great strategies to hold those words in until it's time to share your ideas.  My kiddos LOVED practicing the strategies (lots of snorting going on here - you'll see!)  As I was hunting for ideas to use with this book to make our lesson more hands-on and give students something to refer to, I came across a great blog called Speech Room News. 

Jenna is a pediatric speech language pathologist who works with students in an elementary setting.  Her blog is filled with ideas on teaching social skills in the classroom.  We used her volcano craft to follow up on our interrupting lesson.

We decided to write strategies we could use to stop interrupting on our volcano strips so students could refer to them as needed.  For the next week, our volcanos sat in our room and you could see everyone trying hard not to interrupt.  All I had to do was say "volcano" when someone interrupted and immediately everyone smiled!  On Friday, students took their volcanoes home, along with a quick note from me explaining what they were and how to use them.

 

Although working on these social skills takes time out from our "academics," it really pays off in the long run.  I'm looking forward to using more of Julia Cook's books (and Jenna's ideas!) in my classroom.  What great ideas do you have for working on social skills in the classroom?

The Power of a Growth Mind-set

Recently my a fellow teacher gave me an article to read on mind-sets.The idea of mind-set, and it's effect on success were discovered by Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck. This is a profound article and my blogpost will make more sense if you read it first. Here is the link to the article: "Mind-Sets and Equitable Education"

In a nutshell the article says that the most important factor to success as a student or as a person is to have a growth mind-set, meaning that regardless of how well you are able to do something at first, you believe that with hard work you can get better. You believe that you will eventually succeed if you keep trying. This has been proven to be more important than I.Q., more important that socio-economic factors, or any other factor in determing success.

I started to think about this growth mind-set as an Art teacher, and how it might effect a classroom teacher as well. I have so many students who come into my class believing before they even begin that they are not creative, that they aren't "good" at art, when in reality anyone can become good at art through hard work and practice. It is only a matter of learning how, just like any other subject. When I tell them this is seems to be a revelation, and it might be for you too! I know that as classroom teachers you also come across students who feel like failures before they even begin.

I was inspired by Rick Carson's book, "Taming Your Inner Gremlin," to create an art lesson that dealt with this fear and that inner critic that keeps us from being the artist, or person we are meant to be. The lesson is done in an art journal style. Students create an Inner Gremlin page full of all of the negative thoughts they have about themselves and about being an artist, they actually draw their gremlin on the page. Then they create a 2nd page that is full of Positive Affirmations. This lesson is intended to help free kids up from the fear of making mistakes and allow them to explore their creativity. I have them give themselves permission to make mistakes. We talk about how often times it is the mistakes that make art beautiful. Here are some of the results:

 

 

This exercise, although I use it in an art classroom, can also be used in your classrooms. Instead of having them write about their negative feelings about being an artist, have them write our their fears and negative thoughts about being a student. It's important that they create a picture of what that gremlin looks like, as well as the written thoughts. Then on the reverse side have them replace those thoughts with positive affirmations, again drawing a positive image as well as writing. It's difficult as a teacher not to judge, or put any kind of evaluation to this assignment at all. They need to have the freedom to mess it up, when you take off the pressure of having to do it perfectly the students will rise to the occasion. Give them lots of examples to use as a jumping off point, and then let them go! It is a powerful lesson for many students and very freeing. If nothing else it opens the door to start talking to your students about the power of a growth mindset.

 

Another lesson that I recently completed with my beginning art class was a self-portrait drawing. My students were overwhelmed with fear of this assignment. We talked about focusing on the process, learning from our mistakes and continuing on our drawing even when it got hard. Nearly every one of the 50+ students I taught were able to complete their portrait and were proud of the result. Here are just a few of the drawings, with a pre-instructional example and a final drawing.

 

 

 

 

With some instruction and more importantly the belief that they could do it if they continued through the tough parts, they were able to do self-portraits that were amazing. Even my students were impressed with themselves!

I hope you take the time to talk to your students about mind-set, it's such a valuable lesson and I love it when they are able to get past that first hurdle, continue on and then be successful, it's so awesome!

Here is a free doodle movie that might get your kids started on their gremlin/self-affirmations pages!

 

Click here if you'd like to use the Inner Gremlin/Postive Affirmation lesson above.

Have fun!

I'm curious, what do you do in your classrooms to encourage a growth mind-set?

Sabrina Wingren - A Space to Create