Jumping Into Leadership

I thought leadership month was going to be easy for us because we are a Leader In Me school and leadership is around us everyday. Well, I was quickly reminded, that we need the helpful tips from Lex to truly be successful. Most of my students have mastered what true leadership means, while others are still making strides to prove they are true leaders themselves. We began the month by watching Lex’s video. He shared qualities of a leader and inspired us to be leaders.

Lex’s Challenge

This month, Lex challenged us to think of a leader in our life and write three characteristics about that person. Students wrote about their parents, grandparents, teachers, and even Lex. Watch our video to find out more about the leaders impacting our lives.

Leadership Essays

Each week I focus on a different writing prompt and I try and mix up the genres. One week this month I selected leadership biographies. Students selected a leader in history and researched their leadership qualities. They wrote their essays focusing on at least three characteristics that made the person a leader. Their essays are on display outside our classroom on our monthly Classroom Champions bulletin board. Students wrote about Muhammad Ali, Rosa Parks, Malala, Neil Armstrong, Martin Luther King, Jr., George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and a few others.

Leader of the Week

Each week in our classroom we vote for a “Leader of the Week”. This month I had students write the reasons for their nominations. Once the winner was selected, I shared how they were a leader throughout the week and the characteristics that their classmates deemed leadership worthy.

Nataly (March 3)

Nataly is a leader because she gets her work done, listens, and follows directions. She is respectful, quiet, kind, helpful, organized, and responsible.

Sarahi (March 10)

Sarahi is a leader because she is quiet, helpful, respectful, organized, funny, kind, and responsible. She completes her work and follows directions.

Max (March 17)

Max is a leader because he is nice, fun, helpful, and quiet. He completes all his work, listens, and follows directions.

Courtney (March 24)

Courtney is a leader because she is nice and funny. She gets all her work done.

The Leader In Me

Our school is a Leader In Me school. We live out the 7 Habits every day. Part of our school’s mission statement says, “To Lead”. Each morning students say the Bullock pledge, “We are Leaders on TRACK…”. When you walk through the doors of our school, you breathe leadership. It is painted on our walls, hanging from our ceilings, and resonating in our classrooms. Listen as my students share a brief summary of the 7 Habits.

As a part of The Leader In Me, our school hosts a Leadership Day each Spring. This year’s Leadership Day will be the first week in April. Students will be able to showcase how they are leaders at our school. Our classroom will be sharing Classroom Champions with two sets of visitor groups. Students also applied, interviewed, and were selected for various leadership roles throughout the big day outside the classroom. Here are our leaders.

Nataly (Master of Ceremonies)

Racheal (Speaker)

 

Sarahi and David (Conductors- Tour Guides)

 

Courtney and Akira (Greeters)

 

Monse and Kamai (Leadership Dancers)

Lakiah (Invitation Designer)

Thank you Lex for reminding us to be the best leaders we can be every day!

Standards

ELA RI.5.9 Integrate information from several texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably. W.5.2 Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly. W.5.7 Conduct short research projects that use several sources to build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic.

We Are Leaders

Are these people leaders?  Justify your answer.

This was an interesting task.  Because the students were not familiar with all of the people in the collage, it lead to some interesting discussions about what makes a leader.  We watched a short video clip that explained Ryan Hreljac’s story.     

Once they had a chance to discuss why they thought some of these people were leaders, while other might not be leaders, in their eyes, they were asked to share what they thought was most important about a leader.  I was blown away by the sophistication of their ideas around leadership.

We watched Jesse’s video and as always the students were excited to see what he was doing and hear about our next challenge:  To think of three ways we could be better leaders.


We are Leaders

We started our second lesson with some self-reflection on when we are leaders.   This was a bit challenging for some, as they might not see themselves as leaders, so I gave them some prompts:

·      When are you a leader at school?

·      When are you a leader on teams or in groups?

·      When are you a leader at home?

·      When are you a leader with your friends?

·      When are you a leader in sports/activities?

Our next step was to watch a video about William Kamkwamba, a 14 year old boy from Malawi who built windmills to help his family to irrigate their crops and bring electricity to their home.  They were inspired by his story and this helped them to list some great examples of leadership qualities that made William a leader in his community.  

Next they worked in groups of 5 to come up with as many different leadership qualities and characteristics as they could.  We did a whip around, where you could only share ideas that had not been said before.  Again, I was very impressed with the ideas each group came up with and that gave them a good base of ideas to choose from in order to accomplish the task that Jesse gave us.

March is a short month for us – we have a two-week Spring Break coming up at the end of this week, so this blog post is a bit early.  I think we were able to accomplish a lot with our theme this month. 

We are a K-6 and so our class is one of the leadership classes responsible for leading whole school activities such as Jump Rope for Heart and Terry Fox Run.  Our students are office monitors, peer helpers, lunch monitors, big buddies, and recycling leaders.  Leadership is a huge focus for our class all year long, so this was a great opportunity for us to take a look at what we do and think about how we can be better leaders!

 (I do have a couple more ideas to help students to develop their leadership skills by the end of the year, so I will share those on Google+ when we finish them.)

Friendship

We had a lot of fun talking about friendship this month. As always, the students enjoyed watching Lex's video and hearing his ideas about friendship. They had a lot of fun taking on his challenge and making new friends on the playground. To prepare for the challenge, we had a conversation about what kinds of questions they could ask the person they wanted to meet. They had so many good ideas! When they reported back about what it was like to introduce themselves to someone they didn't know, it turned out that they used a lot of the questions we had brainstormed together. Some favorites were: what is your favorite color? and what is your favorite thing to play? We also talked a lot about what it means to be a good friend and times when they had shown that they were a good friend. This is such a caring and friendly class and they really embraced this month's theme. The pictures are of the students practicing meeting someone new and asking them questions.

Friendship

The list of things we did this month went on and on.  We had so much fun learning about what make a good friend and how to make friends.  We branched out of our comfort zone as individuals and tried to make new friends.

We decorated paper sacks for Valentines Day.  Students were able to use crayons, stickers, markers and other crafty items.  I told them they could only use things someone else had, they couldn't use the materials I gave them.  They had to ask politely and kindly to people at their table to use things they wanted, thank them and return it when done.  I was amazed at the kindness and sharing going on.  They learned to not be greedy for what they wanted.  Everyone's bag looked amazing and beautiful.  I heard lots of students say things like "look at the cool sticker my friend Ava gave me." for example.  It became much more of a deeper friendship bonding time than I had realized it might be.  On Valentines Day, the students were so proud of their bags and the neat things they created with their friends.

I read to the students a pledge of kindness.  It goes like this: I pledge to myself on this day, to try to be kind in every way.  To every person, big and small, I will help them if they fall.  When I love myself and others too, it's the best that I can do!  The tune is to Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.  Credit for this goes to a Teachers Pay Teachers item I downloaded.  It stuck with the students and I heard them singing it during other parts of the day.  It was sure fun.

We watched the DVD story of Chrysanthemum.  The students really had empathy for her as she was teased and feelings hurt continuously.  This was a new story for everyone in the class.  I had made a giant paper heart ahead of time.  During the show, every time someone said something hurtful, I stopped the show and had a few kids wrinkle the paper heart.  Then without saying anything, started the show again and continued this throughout that part of the story.  The heart was a wrinkled mess.  It was very visual to the class how the hurtful words had impacted Chrysanthemum's heart.  They understood how their words can hurt their friends just the same.  I was also asked the question from a student why the teacher in the book didn't help Chrysanthemum with the girl bullies.  They told me that I would never had let that go.  I would have helped Chrysanthemum and had a consequence for the teasing girls.  That made me feel good.  Good to know the class knows they have support for situations for things like this.  Our conversation continued and the also know that Kerry is an important person in our lives that would support us and help us with a situation like this.

After this discussion, I had two students try and smooth out the heart.  When they were done, two others, and again.  The heart was still wrinkled.  Next, I had band-aids with pictures on them I put out on the table.  I asked the question, "Will these band-aids make the wrinkles go away?  Will all the hurtful words that she heard just go away?'  The class all answered yes, for sure.  So, one by one, the students opened the wrappers and placed a fancy band-aid on the wrinkled heart.  The heart remained wrinkled.  I heard several "oh wow, it's still really wrinkled" and other comments that were surprising to them.  Love a good object lesson that goes just as you hoped.  We finished putting all the band-aids on and I held up the heart.  I shared that in our own hearts, when we are wrinkled from hurtful words, there are things that can be done to help the hurt go away, but it might never be as smooth as it was before.  The moral is that we should be super careful what words we choose to say to our friends or other people.  Is it kind and friendly?  Would I want someone to say it to me?

The class made a friendship quilt together.  Each student made a square of the quilt.  Individually, each square looked sort of simple and plain.  Then, put together, it was a beautiful quilt.  The students really enjoyed coloring it.  It was a challenge for several as they were asked to color in all the white.  I have some impulsive students who scribble to finish their coloring projects.  Several students helped others finish theirs if they were having trouble with the coloring.  It was a great friendship activity.

I wanted the students to make sure they acknowledged Kerry, our mentor, with a valentine card.  They each made one, I scanned them and sent them off to her.  Hope they arrived and were readable.  The students really enjoyed making the cards and were creative in what they told her.  It was really sweet.

Another art project we did was three hearts inside of each other.  The students had to put 1/2" square pieces of paper over the drawn hearts.  It was super fun and took a lot of perseverance to stick with it.  When students were finished I gave them the choice to read a book or help a friend.  Every student that had that choice helped another student.  It was great to see students that weren't necessarily friends that play regularly, working together to complete this project.  They turned out really sweet.

They love I spy word finds.  We did this last month with the perseverance as well.  I gave them cookie jars with words hidden to find.  They had to figure out with a friend how to share the magnifying glass.  I saw some really good turn taking and sharing.  Each student at the table had a different page of words to find.  Many students worked together to find the words. really good friend skills.

In our lunch room, the tables were turned and reorganized.  The other kindergarten teacher and I decided to have the two classes sit together.  I asked my class that if they wanted to be a good friend, they would sit by someone in the other class and have a nice conversation with them.  If there wasn't room on the bench, they could ask politely to have a spot.  The class was so amazing with this!  The other class went to lunch first.  Many of the kids did just this.  I didn't see any of my students sitting next to someone in our class only.  They were intermixed beautifully with the others.  The other kindergarten teacher was amazed at their kindness to ask for a space and want to sit with her class.  Another reason I LOVE Classroom Champions and the impact it has on students.

We read so many books on friendship, too many to tell about each.  The Zero, One, and Two series by Kathryn Otoshi are amazing.  The class asked to read them several times.  Two is about leaving others out and being unkind.  I had a student that was doing this in class.  After reading the book, she just stopped.  No conversation needed with her.  Well, and a month of talking about being friends and kindness.  Gerald and Piggy are always a hit.  We read I love my new friend.  Piggy and Gerald learn that they can be friends and still have friends with others.

This was such a fun month with so many activities and stories, opportunities to be friends, make friends, and understand how to be a friend.  I think it was amazing to see how the students were able to work with each other to deepen their friendships and branch out to new friendships.
   

Friendship

FRIENDSHIP

Friendship - everyone needs one. But how do we make a friendship work? I must say, I am very fortunate to have a great class this year! A class who rises up to all the challenges we place upon them and who accept everyone for their differences. Because of that, talking Friendship in February was easy for us! 

Being in grade 6 and 7, friendships can sometimes be difficult to navigate. On an ongoing basis we are always working on healthy friendships and especially healthy "girl" friendships. Most of our students have been in the same class together since Junior Kindergarten. That's 1,710 days on average spent together so far! Wow, that is a lot of days. So, at this age we start to see some "frustrations" emerge. This month we focussed on branching out of our comfort zone and making deeper connections with another student whom you wouldn't typically spend as much time with. 

Our classes took the lead for Pink Shirt Day, wearing their Pink Shirts proudly and making a Pink Shirt Promise. We talked a lot about cyber bullying and healthy online relationships and how those relationships affect our everyday life. Each student made a Pink Shirt Promise of their own, dedicated to making the world a more tolerant place. In order to educate our school community, as a class we decided to make Anti-Bullying Infographics to share with the school. They included information on who to reach out to if you need help, and what you can do to help a friend in need. 

February was another fast and busy month for us in 6A and 7A, and we are very much looking forward to our upcoming March Break and jumping into Leadership with both feet upon our return!