The Cost of Kindness

Building Character

“Never underestimate the power of a single act of kindness. Your act may just be the added lift that someone needs to go from falling to flying.”

-Zero Dean

About a year ago, a friend asked me: “Jen, what do you dislike most about teaching?” In the moment, I said absolutely nothing. I love every part of it. My passion for teaching blinded me and made me forget that there is something I dislike. I don’t like that building character in a classroom takes a back seat to the “rigorous” and “time consuming” standards that we need to meet as teachers.

In elementary school, kids are still learning right from wrong. Some children, if not all of them, are not fully aware of the power words or actions can have on somebody. There’s this perception that you must fit in or else you’ll be an outcast. Here’s a question: what’s the criteria for fitting in? This is the problem and what MUST be addressed in your classroom. John Mays Hammond once said: “Building character is the real foundation of all worthwhile success.” I love this quote! Building character is just as important as teaching the curriculum for each subject throughout your day. Students need to understand the power of their actions as well as the power of their words.

In my classroom, I launch character education right away and I start with this idea of belonging. Everyone wants to feel like they belong, but there’s always a cost to this. You might have to change your appearance. You might have to change the way you act. WHY? Why are you doing that? 

The video above is one of the most powerful videos I’ve ever watched in regards to belonging. I’m so happy a friend from college presented this video for one of her projects. The girl in the video went to all costs to change herself in order to belong!! She first bought the hat because it was the new trend, but then it didn’t fit. Next, she tries to paint herself the same color as everybody else! It broke my heart the moment I saw that because that’s what kids are doing these days! They are changing the way they look in order to fit in.  Yet, some “educators” feel that this PROBLEM doesn’t need to be addressed in the classroom.

It’s critical that these types of issues are addressed! I have shown this video for each class I’ve taught (two 5^th grade classes, one 3^rd grade) Show the video and then discuss it…

·      What did this girl try to do to fit in?

·      How does she feel when the things she tries to change about herself don’t work out?

·      Why is she trying to change herself?

I don’t really like the ending to the video because it shows the girl finding a friend who has the same color hat. However, the ending can still become a powerful discussion in the classroom. In all 3 classes, I always asked this question:

Why couldn’t green and red get along?

What did each class say? NOTHING. That’s the power of building character in your classroom. Each class didn’t understand why green and red were not getting along. It was simply because the girl in red didn’t look like those with the green hats. Children need to have these moments of clarity! Like Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Intelligence plus character – that is the true goal of education.”

At the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year I read Thank You, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco. At the end of the year, I showed this picture from the same book:

Some of my students were not being mindful of the words they were saying to other students. So, I presented the picture and I asked my class: “Who wants to make someone feel like this?” No one raised their hand.

Words hurt. Nine times out of ten the reason someone said something hurtful was to fit in. They wanted to feel like they belonged. It worked, right? You get to go home and feel accomplished. You said something hurtful and got a positive reaction from your friends…

…but what about the person you directed your words to? Does that person simply forget about what was said and move on? No. That person looks like the above picture and goes home miserable, feeling like absolute garbage.

Then, I asked my class this question: “Do you want to make someone’s life miserable?” No one raised their hand.

The cost of making someone feel excluded is MUCH MORE than the cost of kindness. It can cost a life. That’s why I feel character education is paramount and must become a part of our curriculum day in and day out.

Here are the two bulletin boards I use in my classroom. The first picture shown is the one that goes up first and stays on for a few months. Then, the second picture shown is the one that stays up for the rest of the year. I am trying to create or find one more that I can post in the middle of the two I use.

Important note: I did not create the idea of the boards. I changed or added to them, but all credit goes to the wonderful people who developed such a fantastic idea! I have included the name of the people I got the idea from below each picture.

charactercountsin3rdgrade.blogspot.com

This board is a perfect fit to our conversation in the beginning of the year about belonging. You need to BE YOU in order to belong! J

Severn School Library

The idea of this board is that students will pick a strip at the start of each week and fulfill the act of kindness. They will write about their experience on Friday. This idea perfectly relates to the quote I used at the beginning of this post – your act of kindness can turn someone’s day around in a snap of a finger.

I’ll leave you with this quote/image I found…always remember to BE YOU!

Getting Students to Expand their Writing when Responding to Literature

Academic Talk

Today’s Focus: Expanding your Writing when responding to literature

Today’s blog is strictly about how we can get our students to expand their writing when responding to literature. I will not be discussing how I set up writing in my classroom (I like the workshop model) until later on.

Think back to elementary school. Think about all of those times when you were given a blank sheet of lined paper at your desk and were asked to respond to a question on the board that connects to a story that was just read aloud.

Some of you may have looked like this:

But…for others, you may have looked like this:

We, as teachers, can never lose sight of meeting the needs of all of our students. We can’t expect all of the students in our classroom to meet our expectations right off the bat. You need to have a back up plan for those who need additional instruction.

I taught 5^th grade, and in the beginning of the year we read Wonder by RJ Palacio. Let’s pretend this was the question written on the front board:

While August’s mom was reading The Hobbit out loud to him, August began to cry. Why do you think August started to cry?

If a student is only given a lined piece of paper to respond to this question, then most of their thinking will take place in their head. For a few, this might work for them. But, in my experience, most of my students needed to set up a plan before they began writing their answer.

I am a firm believer of explicit teaching. How can you expect students to master a skill/strategy/task when you’ve provided very little insight on your expectations? Don’t tell the students what you expect...SHOW the students what you expect. 

When my students responded to literature, we used the ESSC format. This was what the 5^th grade team launched before I began teaching there. Once I learned more about it, I fell in complete love with the format because of its lucidness. 

E = Echo (Restate/Answer)

You want to restate the question and provide your answer, which should be an inference.

S = Support #1

Provide your first piece of evidence from the text that corresponds with the question.

S = Support #2

Provide your second piece of evidence from the text that corresponds with the question.

C = Concluding Sentence

This should connect to your echo (hence why it’s the same color). It should sum up everything stated above.

Once I launched the ESSC format with my kids this year, I realized the first issue…the students were just stating the evidence and then moving on. What was missing? The EXPANSION of their details. My students were not explaining WHY the details they included were meaningful to what the question was asking.

This was not taught and therefore, as a teacher, I can’t just expect my students to know how to expand their writing. Furthermore, I had to provide another lesson that showed the ESSC format with its new addition. Once this happened, students worked on expanding their responses to be as complete as possible. I always tell them to pretend I didn’t read the story.

Below you will see the graphic organizer I created to follow the ESSC format with the explanation piece included J

Ok so here’s what I would do…

1.      Launch the ESSC graphic organizer.

Click here to download this graphic organizer, for free!!

2.     Model an ESSC response using the organizer

a.     I will create a different question from the same book and model my expectations.

b.     I will color-code

3.     Review the expectations of an ESSC response

4.     Partner Work: Create another question that students work with partners on to continue getting used to this format.

5.     Independent Work: Students are given a question to answer on their own (of course, I will work with a small group if necessary)

Not all of my students will use this graphic organizer permanently. Some can use it to see what I expect in a response and almost turn it into their own checklist to make sure they included an echo, support #1 w/ explanation, support #2 w/ explanation, and concluding sentence.

Some students used the graphic organizer all year because of it’s directness and effectiveness. Students can even create this graphic organizer on the “Planning Page” of their state tests (if they take those). It’s something they can utilize no matter what their doing!

As a side note, I LOVE graphic organizers because not only do they help students with structure and organization, but they also allow the students to just transfer their writing onto the lined sheet of paper. It eliminates a lot of the anxiety that might come into play if you were given a blank lined sheet of paper right out of the gate.

I hope this blog was helpful for someone out there. My writing may be all over the place, but the point is we want all students to feel successful. You can’t push students to master one way of doing something. Be ready to show them multiple ways in order for them to find the method that best suits them as a learner.

PLEASE NOTE: In my original plan, I said I would be focusing on specific strategy, but instead I am going to discuss something relating to ELA, Math, Social Studies, or Science and see where it takes me.

Rain, Rein, and Reign

Tuesday’s Book Talk

During the holidays, I was given a very generous gift and decided to use that gift to continue building my classroom library. On Facebook, I asked my friends for some book suggestions and one my friends suggested Rain Reign by Ann M. Martin. I read the summary of the book and definitely thought it was a good enough book to place in my classroom library, especially since it is about a girl in 5^th grade (at that time, I was teaching 5^th grade).

      When the book came in the mail, I was immediately attracted to the cover. Something about it just hooked me right away. I guess you can say I don’t really follow the whole “don’t judge a book by it’s cover” rule. I am someone who picks books based on the cover sometimes. Since this book stood out to me, I included it in our class read aloud vote this school year. My students seemed interested, but Hatchet by Gary Paulsen was also in the running and that took precedence. Although it wasn’t selected, I put it on the back burner to read over the summer.

      Well, summer just started and I chose to read this book first. I started it yesterday at 7:30 pm, and finished it this afternoon around 1:00 pm. It was a book I had a hard time putting down because it gave such a realistic look into someone who has high-functioning autism.  The girl, named Rose, is obsessed with words, mainly homonyms, rules, and numbers. In almost every situation she was in, she was thinking about homonyms. It depicts how children with autism can become so hooked on one thing. For those who do not have autism, when they are told to stop, they typically do. However, for those children who have autism, it’s hard for them to just stop. They can’t. Having a routine is crucial and that is also accurately portrayed in the story.

      This story is truly heartbreaking. You see a single father struggle to take care of his daughter. It seems that he still couldn’t wrap his head around Rose’s diagnosis. You see a girl’s love for a dog become so monumental, but tragic all at the same time. You also see what happens when a girl with high-functioning autism acts when she becomes stressed or frustrated.

      The part of this story that really struck me was Rose’s awareness. She knew when her dad was being sarcastic or even hurtful. She knew that her dad made a mistake. She knew that the kids in class didn’t really understand her. She knew when she needed a break. She knew Rain (her dog) and what her dog needed. There’s always this assumption that people with autism or Asperger’s are less intelligent when really that is so far from the truth.

      I would love to read this book aloud to my students one day. It’s one of those stories you need to sit and listen to. It’s a story about difference. It’s a story about acceptance. It’s a story about family. It’s a story about love. You know the saying “If you really love someone, let them go?” Yeah. This book is about that.

Check out a book trailer of Rain Reign!!