Today's Lesson on Choices and Actions

Today we spent a great deal of time talking about how we want to be remembered, and how we want others to think of us.

As the school year goes on we have all gotten more comfortable. And by fifth grade most of these kids have been together a long time. As the year has gone on I have started to see more and more cattiness and little spats arising.  I wanted to spend some time helping the students to take a look at their actions and the way those actions change the way others see us. 

When the students arrived to school this morning they were all given random name tags. The name tags showed words that most people would NOT like used to describe them. (Words like cheater, drama, bad sport, self centered, bragger, know it all... Etc.) I asked the students to wear them throughout the day, and to record how it felt to wear those words.

I did my best to make sure students were all aware that these were not names we were calling them, or accusing them of being, but just a part of an experiment. 

 The students said that wearing the negative words made them feel things like: ashamed, embarrased, sad, angry, upset, shy, and "like people thought I was a bad person".

We then talked about how we "wear words" that describe us everyday, even though we cannot see them, our choices and our actions show our words to other people.

I asked each of the students to really think about the way others may think of them. I asked them if there were any words that they felt may describe them, that they were not happy with. We wrote those words on hearts. (Mine is shown below.)

After that we sat down and thought about what choices and actions we have done to make those words show on us. The students really thought hard about what things they have done and what choices they have made that they felt painted them in a negative way.

I could see a lot of "light bulbs" going off as the students began to realize what their actions are showing others. 

After this, we destroyed those negative hearts and began to write the words that we WOULD like to represent us instead. Each of us made a list of actions and choices we can start doing to  help us become the type of people we want to be.

This set the stage for us to begin writing new goals for ourselves. With our new goals we can Proactively work to become better people and make better choices. 

In the end, we switched out each negative word on the board for a postive one and said what we could do to show those positive words.

At first the students stood up one by one and pointed out a single word that meant something to them. They said what they were going to do so that they do not end up being described with that word, then went to the board and replaced that word with a positive one. 

One by one all of the students all came together and took turns sharing and changing the words on the board that hit home to them and they wanted to change.

In the end, the students took off their negative words and made their own name tags with more personal positive words that they would like to represent them.

HELPFUL

BRAVE

INTELLEGENT

HONEST

SMART

GOOD PLAYER

GRATEFUL

After spending the second half of the day wearing postivie words we found that people treated us better when we wore them. We discovered that whether we are wearing our words or not, we carry them with us. If we are good people and make good choices people will treat us nicely and with respect. We also found, if put bad things into the world, that we get them back.

I am very proud of the goals the kids set for themselves today and how open they were to really thinking about themselves and making plans to become even better!

I certainly do love these children. Thank you so much for trusting me with your most prized possessions. 

-Mrs. Sims