Journey To Success: Skill

This month, our school is working on SKILL as our Citizenship of the Month topic.  Each month, I have selected a topic for the teachers to be looking out for students who are displaying these character traits.  Here is a lesson plan I have developed, based on John Woodens Journey to Success concepts.

You can find my lesson plan here.  I used the book Leo the Lightning Bug, my all time favorite story to share with kiddos.  It covers so many different topics its crazy!!!

For my Kindergarteners, we made these cute little bugs that I got from this cute place, click here.

 

Also, just wantd to share that there is a Leo the Lighting Bug app for $2.99.  I thought it was pretty cute for little kiddos.

A Bucket Story

I am so glad I am doing the "Bucket" theme this year!  Not only does this apply to my students and faculty, but I need the reminders as well.  Like all of us, there are going to be bad mornings.  Well, mine was just that!  However, when I was able to get things under control, I ran into one of my favorite people.  It is so amazing how things can change just by the example of someone's positive character!  We don't know each other very well, but there is just something about this woman that you can't help but to smile and want to be around.  She is truly a bucket filler and I think that she doesn't even know she is doing it!  Thats what I love about her!  Her name is Jackie!  She fills my bucket every time I have the priviledge of seeing her!



Have You Filled A Bucket Today?

It was very strange when I came back to school for the new year.  At the end of every year, I think back about my experiences, the kids, their struggles, issues, and problems.  I come up with a new theme so that I have time to think about it over the summer time and gather ideas.  Well, from meeting with individual students, I have found that a lot of them have a very low self-esteem.  I thought that the bucket theme would work splendid!  I came back to work and not only did my administration present their theme based on the book How Full Is Your Bucket (by Tom Rath and Mary Reckmeyer), but my guidance counseling director has also made it the counseling department theme!  Coincidence?  Maybe.  Needless to say, it all seems perfectly perfect that it all turned out this way!

So here is my bulletin board for the first half of this year!  The first half of the year I will attempt to increase students' self-esteem.  Then the second half of the year, I hope to teach the students how to increase others' self-esteem.

The Band-Aid Chicken

Can I just say, I LOVE THIS BOOK! I found it to be very accepted from Kindergarten up to 6th grade.

This book covers a lot of topics; accepting others, bullying, courage, bravery, standing up to others, peer pressure, and self-esteem. I am sure there are many other topics that you could pull out of this story as well.

I used this book with my students as sort of a review from the lessons I had taught over the year. Mainly, I used it to address bullying. Last year, I taught my students Bully Prevention In Positive Behavior Support (found here). With this program, students were supposed to use a "stop" signal with their hand as they are saying "stop." I started getting feedback from students about this program and that it wasn't working. Come to find out, students weren't taking it seriously and it was becoming a joke. Students would be using the hand signal inappropriately, which caused more problems.

After every page I read, I would stop and ask the class which lesson it related to. This was a great way to "test" them to see how much they remembered. I emphasized the parts where it related to the bully lesson I taught before. The Band-aid Chicken told them to "STOP" and the other chickens took her seriously and they STOPPED.

After discussing the story and pointing out a few things worth mentioning, I had the students draw the Band-aid Chicken and provided a band-aid for them to put it on their drawing (grades 1-3).

I was able to get this lesson idea from Debra Wosnik.