This article was written by Jennifer Bond, a third grade teacher at Glengary Elementary in Walled Lake Consolidated Schools, Michigan. Jennifer builds technology and hands-on learning into her classroom through BYOD Days, Genius Hour, and maker projects, and she presents at state and national conferences on topics including Google for Education, computational thinking, and STEAM.
This is the first year our school, Glengary Elementary, has participated in The Positivity Project (P2). So far it has been a wonderful addition to the school day. We have enjoyed the impactful videos, classroom discussions, and reflections on character strengths. When asked why P2 is important, one of my students said, “If kids get to know the strengths, they are more able to recognize them in their own lives and in others.” Another student reflected, “I like learning new stuff and new words. I never knew what perspective meant and now I know to think of others’ feelings.”
We recently finished the book, The Wild Robot by Peter Brown, which we were reading as part of The Global Read Aloud. The main character in the book, Roz, is a robot who learns to live in the wild by observing animal behaviors and adapting. As we reflected on the book, a student mentioned Roz’s perspective. Then a student looked up at our character strength word wall and realized Roz demonstrated all of the character strengths we have studied thus far in the school year. We had a quick discussion on the strengths, but my intern teacher and I knew that we could take it a bit further with a reading activity.
The next day, we created posters with the character strengths. Then we instructed children to think of Roz and how she demonstrated each character strength. The students filled the posters up with post-it-notes; giving examples from the text. The activity was so impactful that the parent volunteer working with the kids decided she wanted to get a copy of The Wild Robot and read it herself!
As we move forward with P2, I am going to make this a regular routine. We’re going to connect our read alouds, along with our independent reading, with the character strengths. In fact, I already created a response form that we can use while reading when we make a connection between a character in a book and a character strength.
P2 has already made an impact in my third-grade classroom in the three short months it has been part of our lives. Although lessons are designed for quick and easy implementation, I love that it is not something that we just do for just 15 minutes a day. Instead, P2 is something that has found its way into many parts of our day and our learning experiences. It is my hope that my students will continue to realize other connections to our learning and fully see the power of these strengths in all aspects of their lives!