Friends See Things Heart to Heart...

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Home : 2008 : January : 12

Friends See Things Heart to Heart...
By JKB

I am always promoting children to be kind and respectful to others. For this activity, I write each student's name on the top of a piece of paper-one for each student. Below that, I number it according to how many students
are in my classroom. (For example, last year, I numbered it 1-28.)

*Each of my students have their own numbers, according to where their name is located in my grade book.

To start this activity, I randomly pass out one page to each student. Then, next to their own number, they have to write ONE or TWO words-nice words-that describe the student who is named on the

top of it. Then, they pass the pages to the next person. Child #1 will always write his response on line number 1, child #20 will always write her response on line 20, etc.

One important detail is that the children cannot write the same words that have already been written by another child. So, if child #3 writes "sweet"......then nobody else can write that same word on that paper!

In the beginning, it is easy to write one or two words, but after several rotations, it gets to be more challenging. At that point, I encourage my children to use a Thesaurus to get more synonyms for the words they want to use.

By the time the lists have been rotated throughout the classroom, there is a master list of descriptive words for each student.

Then, I collect them and read their word choices. A few times, the words were not really positive, but I knew who wrote them by their number. In those cases, I went back to them and told them they had to make a better choice.

Once all the lists were complete, I cut out large white hearts, backed by large red hearts. Then, I wrote each child's name in the center of the heart. I paperclipped each list to the hearts and passed them back around again. Then, the children wrote their words from the list on the white heart.

After that, I made a huge heart with the title "Friends See Things Heart to Heart" and I posted all the students' hearts around it. It was amazing to see how much they liked reading them! When I decided to change the bulletin board, I gave each student their heart to keep.

Just recently, I ran into a student that I taught in 3rd grade. He is now attending college and he told me he still has his heart! :)

JKB