Kindness is an emotion. Who does not like to feel cared, cherished, admired and loved? These are all basic human emotions and so is kindness. We all want to experience one or all of these emotions every day.
To inculcate this habit, why not we start by teaching about kindness in our classroom to our students? Moreover, this should be made a routine. According to a survey, there are three types of learning which occur; cognitive learning, development of motor skills and affective which is, emotional/feeling based.
You can start off by doing a five-minute activity at the start of the day. Ask your students to narrate their fellow classmate one good thing that happened to them. It could be anything a major or a minor thing but don’t hesitate in sharing it with others. Once the practice is conducted, enlist volunteers who would be willing to share one of their positive stories or one of their neighbor’s good bits.
This method will allow students to open up about their lives to other students and in the process can get acknowledged plus celebrated by the class including teacher.
Another activity that can be practiced is allowing the students to engage in a writing activity. They can be asked to silently pen down each other’s good qualities, meanwhile enhancing their writing skills. The teacher can lend them handouts with a number of sentence starters for them to fill in such ‘I am impressed by the way you…’ or ‘I really like your personality because…’ and the likes thereof.
Instruct students to write their respective names on that piece of paper, gather them and then the teacher should randomly roll them out to see who said what about his or her classmate. Whoever’ paper the other has got, they should then write something about that person.
Repeat this several times. Academic writing editing services can be availed online. Allow for students to choose from a number of sentence starters or they can all pick one, it is really up to the teacher. But the end result would be a lot of happy faces.
Shout-outs could be tricky if the class you have been dealt is a tough or a shy crowd. So give them ample time to prepare. A month to work things out would qualify as ample. Teacher, having provided them time should then tell them to say a few words for the person you appreciate or think is influencing you in order to become better at studies or as a person.
These shout-outs can go like ‘I really like how…’ or ‘I’d like to give a shout-out to… for bringing out his best to his group today!” and etc. With time these shout-outs will transform into the more natural way and, believe you me, will multiply towards the end of class.
Another way, the teacher can lead students on road to kindness is by arranging for an appreciation box. For those who don’t speak very often or stay quite most of the time, in this manner their voice can be heard. So create a box and place at the back of the classroom. Label it ‘Appreciation Box’.
The teacher along with students can then share their nice by writing them down on a piece of paper and dropping those in the appreciation box for classmates. Once the practice has concluded pick out those notes one by one and read them aloud. A family-like-feel will ensue.
