At the beginning of the year we read a story called How Full is Your Bucket?. The story portrayed to students how we each have an invisible bucket that we carry with us. When bad things happen to us during the day, people say negative words, you argue with your siblings or friends, or similar circumstances, our bucket drips out water and becomes empty. When we say negative things to others we spill water from their bucket as well. When it is empty our hearts hurt and we begin to make bad choices. However, when we say kind words, use kind looks and kind touches to one another we fill our bucket up and help fill other people's bucket. When it is full we are more likely to share these kind actions and make good choices.
As a class we discussed what this looks like in our own lives. As a visual reminder for our class I created a big bucket that we fill with golf balls. Every morning the bucket is full. Our goal is to have a full bucket at the end of the day. I remove balls if they are making bad choices and put balls back in when they make good choices. If they have a full bucket at the end of the day they earn a star. Every 5 stars they earn we get to celebrate with a popcorn party.
24 days later, we finally celebrated with a popcorn party!
It was refreshing to see the students' faces light up when they realized they actually earned all five stars. They were pumped. My hope is that they keep up the good behavior and our bucket stays full!
We will see!!!!!
Until our next celebration we will continue to work hard on doing the right thing.
Those first graders are so lucky to have you for a teacher. Your lessons will help them WAY beyond their ABC's. Love you. Keep up the great work.
ReplyDelete