Creating engaging lessons is an important part of teaching. These activities cause students to use their critical thinking and higher order thinking skills to learn about themselves, other classmates and the world around them.
Mindful Morning
Engage students in morning meeting songs and dances with important messages relating to confidence, compassion, gratitude, diversity, perseverance and more!
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Alex and the Kaleidoscope, https://www.alexandthekaleidoscope.com/
Journaling Activites
Journaling gives students the ability to express themselves through writing their thoughts and ideas down in short phrases, sentences, or drawings. This helps the students communicate their thoughts and feelings with themselves and the teacher.
Each student should have their own mindfulness journal that is used almost daily. The teacher can ask the following prompts after students read a story, listen to a song, or watch a video relating to mindfulness:
Questions Relating to Emotions
- How does "X" make you feel? Why?
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How does "X" relate to me? How does "X" relate to this classroom? How does "X" relate to world outside the classroom?
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How can my feelings affect others around me?
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How can others affect the way I am feeling?
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Questions Related to Gratitude
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Who are you most grateful for right now? Why?
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What are you most grateful for right now? Why?
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Questions Related to Diversity
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Why is diversity important?
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Where do you see diversity in the classroom?
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Where do you see diversity in the world?
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Questions Related to Senses
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What are 5 things you see?
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What are 4 thins you hear?
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What are 3 things you are touching?
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What are 2 things you smell?
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What is 1 thing you taste?
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Questions Related to Friendship
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What qualities make a good friend?
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How am I a good friend?
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How can I be a good friend to others?
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How does being a good friend make me feel? Why?
Color Your World With Kindness Lesson
Subject: Mindfulness Grade Level: 2nd Duration: 40min-45min
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Lesson Context:
Big Ideas and Essential Questions
Big Idea:
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Effective speakers prepare and communicate messages to address the audience and convey their purpose.
Essential Question
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How do speakers employ language and utilize resources to effectively communicate a message?
Central Topic and Concepts of the Content Areas
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Within this lesson, there are several social skills. The main social skill being taught is kindness. Kindness is an essential social skill because it is an important underlining skill that leads to bigger social skills such as communication and respect- which are also seen in this lesson. These students need to understand what kindness looks like, sounds like and experience this themselves. Although the teacher models kindness daily, creating a lesson where students are experiencing kindness and are seeing how it impacts the world is important for them to understand.
Prerequisite Skills
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Students will have a basic understanding of mindfulness skills. This includes an acknowledgement of students’ individual feelings, the cause and effects of various actions and how this impacts the students around them, and meditation techniques. The students acknowledge their feelings and can vocalize/ journal about them. Students understand the concept of kindness and have read books about this social skill.
Learner Outcomes (Instructional Objectives):
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Students will be able to work together to develop ideas of how to spread kindness with 100% accuracy.
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Students will be able to demonstrate their understanding of kindness through writing and visuals with 90% accuracy.
Related Academic Standards: (Common Core and/or PA Standards – as relevant to the standards used by the school district)
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1.4 2.F Demonstrate a grade appropriate command of the conventions of standard English grammar, usage, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling.
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1.4 2.I Support the opinion with reasons that include details connected to the opinion.
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1.5 2.A Participate in collaborative conversations with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
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1.5 2.C Ask and answer questions about what a speaker says to clarify comprehension, gather additional information, or deepen understanding of a topic or issue.
Vocabulary:
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Kindness: The quality of being friendly, generous or considerate
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Mindfulness: Living life in the moment
Materials:
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7 inch width of colorful construction paper
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Crayons/ colored pencils/ markers
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Stapler
Resources:
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Color Your World with Kindness Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwelE8yyY0U
Instructional Procedures(s):
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Introduction
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To start this lesson, the teacher will have the students take out their mindfulness journals. The teacher will write the word “kindness” on the board and say, “On the board, I wrote “kindness”. Your task is to draw, label or write anything that comes to your mind about this word”. At this point, the teacher will play their mindfulness music in the background while they are working. The teacher will circulate throughout the classroom and give students three minutes to complete this task. The teacher will ring the bell and say to the students, “would anybody like to share their ideas?”. The teacher will call on students and they will participate. The teacher will then say, “These are wonderful thoughts! Now that we have an idea of what kindness is about, we are going to watch a video about this. Once the video has finished playing, you are going to write in your mindfulness journals what acts of kindness you see and what happens to the people in the video”. The teacher will also write these directions on the whiteboard for students to use as a reference.
Once the video ends and the students write their ideas down, the teacher will say, “I want you to talk with the person sitting next to you about the acts of kindness you saw and why it is important to spread these acts of kindness”. The teacher will give the students three minutes to discuss their ideas and will circulate around the classroom. The teacher will say, “does anybody want to share what you and your partner talked about?”. At this point, the teacher will call on students to share their ideas with the class.
Developmental Activities
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Once the students finish sharing their ideas, the teacher will say, “Thank you for your participation! You are all being mindful of others around you and that is amazing. Now that we understand the importance of spreading acts of kindness and what it looks like, we can “color” our school with kindness! All of you will work in pairs. You and your partner will each be given five long pieces of colorful construction paper. On each piece of paper, you and your partner are to write one act of kindness that you can do in school. This should written in complete sentences with correct punctuation. You can write this in crayon, colored pencil or marker to make this colorful and bright! ”. Once the teacher explains the directions, they will present the PowerPoint that has the directions and pictures of each step for the directions. At this point, the teacher will have the teacher helpers distribute the colorful paper and crayons/colored pencils/markers. The teacher will circulate around the classroom helping students if needed. The students will have twenty minutes to complete this assignment. The teacher will give a two minute warning before moving to the next part of the lesson.
Closure
Once the students are finishing, the teacher will say, “I see that many of you are finishing up. For those of you still working, please work silently because we are going to be sharing some of our acts of kindness. Each one of you will come to the carpet with your five pieces of construction paper and choose one act of kindness that you wrote to share with the class. I will take all of them and staple them together to create a link”. At this point, the students already know what being an active listener looks and sounds like. The students will come up one by one to share their ideas. Once the lesson is finished, the teacher will place the link in the hallway with a poster that says, “When we share acts of kindness, we color our world”.
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Addressing Learners’ Diverse Needs:
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Accommodations and Adaptations (IEPs, 504 Plans)
For the students with ADHD, they will receive one construction paper at a time with a checklist. This will help the student stay on track and remember all of the steps needed to complete the assignment. In this way, the student will not feel overwhelmed with the amount of work being assigned.
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Language adjustments made for specific ELP levels (include ELP level and PA ELP Standards
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Level 2, Emerging, 16.1.2-3.2W Label illustrations of personal experiences with phrases and short sentences with a
partner.
For the English language learner student, they will draw and label their acts of kindness on their construction paper. This student will also be paired with a proficient English student who will help explain acts of kindness to the English language learner.
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Challenges for advanced learners
For the advanced learners, these students will write two sentences for each construction paper. Once sentence will be the act of kindness and the other sentence explains why this act of kindness is important.
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Formative/Summative Assessment:
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Formative Assessment
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The teacher will be circulating around the classroom while the students are working. The teacher will be asking questions like, “how did you reach this conclusion?”, “what made you think of this act of kindness?” and “what does this act of kindness mean to you?”. Asking these types of questions makes students use their critical thinking skills and makes them relate to the activity in a personal way.
Summative Assessment
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The teacher will give an end of unit assessment where students will write acts of kindness and explain where they are seen and why they are important.
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Have You Filled a Bucket Today? Lesson
Subject: Reading Grade Level: 2nd Duration: 45min- 50min
Big Idea
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Effective readers use appropriate strategies to construct meaning.
Essential Questions
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What is this text really about?
Central Topic and Concepts of the Content Areas
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The main skill being taught in this lesson is kindness. Kindness is an essential for students to understand because it is an important underlining skill that leads to bigger social skills such as communication and respect; which are also seen in this lesson. These students need to understand what kindness looks like, sounds like and how they experience this themselves. Although the teacher models kindness daily, creating a lesson where students are experiencing kindness, reading about kindness and are seeing how it impacts the people around them is important for students to understand.
Prerequisite Skills
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Students will have a basic understanding of mindfulness skills. This includes an acknowledgement of students’ individual feelings, the cause and effects of various actions and how this impacts the students around them, and meditation techniques. The students acknowledge their feelings and will vocalize/ journal about them. Students understand the concept of kindness and have read books about this social skill.
Learner Outcomes (Instructional Objectives):
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Students will be able to create a play to demonstrate their ideas of how to be a bucket filler with 90% accuracy.
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Students will be able to communicate acts of kindness in a group setting with 100% accuracy.
Related Academic Standards: (Common Core and/or PA Standards – as relevant to the standards used by the school district)
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CC.1.3.2.A Recount stories and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.
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1.4 2.I Support the opinion with reasons that include details connected to the opinion.
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1.5 2.A Participate in collaborative conversations with peers and adults in small and larger groups.
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1.5 2.C Ask and answer questions about what a speaker says to clarify comprehension, gather additional information, or deepen understanding of a topic or issue.
Vocabulary:
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Kindness: The quality of being friendly, generous or considerate
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Mindfulness: Living life in the moment
Materials:
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Readers Notebook
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Pencil
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PowerPoint
Resources:
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Have You Filled a Bucket Today? By Carol McCloud
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Pdesas.org
Instructional Procedures(s):
Introduction
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To start this lesson, the teacher will have the students take out their reading notebooks. The teacher will create a K-W-L chart. The teacher will say, “Please go ahead and draw this chart that is on the board. The “K” stands for what we know, the “W” stands for what we want to know more about and the “L” stands for what we learned. Right now, I want you to look at your “K” row and write down anything you know about kindness. It can be definitions, examples, feelings or emotions that relate to this”. At this point, the students will have two minutes to write their answers down. The teacher will go around giving each student one post-it. The teacher will say, “I see some of you are finishing up. I want you to write on the post-it one thing you know about kindness from the list you created in the “K” row. Once you write this down, please walk your post-it to the board and stick it in the “k” row of the chart”.
Once students place their post-it on the board, the teacher will hold a class discussion about what they know about kindness. The teacher will say, “These are amazing thoughts! I am so happy that we already know so much about kindness. But, as good learners, we always want to know more, and we are curious about the world. You are going to complete the “W” row of the chart with the person sitting next to you. You and your partner are going to write down any questions you have about kindness”. At this point, the students will have three minutes to write down any questions they have. The teacher will circulate the classroom and will pass out one post-it for each group. The teacher will say, “Now that you and your partner have written your questions down, choose one question and write it on the post-it. One of you will walk to the board and place it in the “W” row of the chart”. Once the students place the post-it on the board, the teacher will read the questions aloud and introduce the story.
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The teacher will say, “Today we are reading a story about kindness. You will hear different ways children and adults will spread kindness by filling each other’s buckets. In your reading notebooks, every time you hear or see an act of kindness, I want you to write it down”. Once the teacher explains this, they will begin to read the story.
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Developmental Activities
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Once the teacher finishes reading the story, they will say, “We are going to review some ways we can be a bucket filler and bucket dipper from the story. Would anybody like to share something they wrote in their notebook?”. The teacher will call on students to respond. After the students finish participating, the teacher will say, “Thank you for the wonderful responses! Now that you have written ways we can fill each other’s buckets and be a bucket dipper, you and your partner are going to create a short play. Both of you are going to choose one way to fill a bucket or one way to be a bucket dipper and perform this to the class. But, when you perform, do not tell us what you are doing. The audience has to guess if you are filling a bucket or being a bucket dipper. If you are performing as a bucket dipper, the audience has to suggest ways to handle the situation in a positive way”.
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At this point, the teacher will assign students their groups- each group will have three students in them. The teacher will also display a PowerPoint presentation with the directions. The directions will have words and visuals to ensure clarity to the students. After, the teacher will designate a location in the classroom for the groups to work in. The students will have 15 minutes to create their plays. While the students are working, the teacher will circulate the classroom answering questions as needed.
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Closure
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Once the students start finishing their plays, the teacher will have everyone return to their seats. The teacher will use popsicle sticks to choose the order in which the groups will be presenting and write it on the board. The teacher will review what it looks and sounds like to be a good audience for others. The teacher will say, “Now that we know what a good audience is, we can be respectful superheroes. When each play is finished, the performers will call on respectful students to see if they can guess what the play is about. Remember, the play can be about filling a bucket or being a bucket dipper. If the play is about being a bucket dipper, what are ways we can be more positive in that situation?”. The teacher will then call the groups and the students will begin to present their plays.
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Once the students finish presenting the play, the teacher will hand out one post-it to each student. The teacher will say, “Today we learned many things about being a bucket filler and a bucket dipper. Your job is to write one thing you learned from today’s lesson. When you are done, you can place the post-it on the “L” row on the board. Once the class completes this, the teacher will read all of the answers aloud and hold a class conversation.
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Addressing Learners’ Diverse Needs:
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Accommodations and Adaptations (IEPs, 504 Plans)
For the students with ADHD, they will receive a checklist in the beginning of the lesson. This will help the students stay on track and remember all of the steps needed to complete the assignment. In this way, the students will not feel overwhelmed with the amount of work being assigned.
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Language adjustments made for specific ELP levels (include ELP level and PA ELP Standards)
16.1.2-3.4S Communicate with peers to join in activities or games
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This student will give ideas about the play using short phrases. The student will also speak at least two times during the play. This student will also be paired with a proficient English student who will help explain bucket filling and bucket dipping to the English language learner.
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Challenges for advanced learners
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For the advanced learners, these students will write three sentences explaining why they choose this situation and why this is important in the classroom.
Formative/Summative Assessment:
Formative
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The teacher will be circulating around the classroom while the students are working. The teacher will be asking questions like, “how did you reach this conclusion?”, “Why did you choose “x” to make a play about?”, “what does this play do to you?” and “how does this play make you feel?”. Asking these types of questions makes students use their critical thinking skills and makes them relate to the activity in a personal way.
Summative
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The teacher will give an end of unit assessment where students will have to explain what it means to be a bucket dipper and bucket filler, where they are seen, and why they are important.
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