The Impact of The Positivity Project at Haviland Elementary

Our school jumped on board with P2 in the fall of 2019. Teachers have been implementing the daily lessons within their classrooms. They appreciate the seamless implementation of the lesson plans and truly enjoy the discussions that so naturally develop within each lesson. Some teachers like to incorporate the lessons within their morning meeting time, while other classrooms in our building find that after snack or lunch works better. The flexibility of lesson timing is great for teachers. Teachers love how simple the P2 website is to navigate and that you can just bookmark the character strength in the browser and have it ready to go. The videos and songs are developmentally appropriate and make learning new vocabulary fun for them!

Gratitude

This year we wanted to expand our students’ understanding of the character strength and complete school-wide activities. As a staff, we talk about different projects we could implement school-wide. The first project we decided on was to showcase the character strength, Gratitude. Each student in our school traced their handprint and wrote multiple things they were thankful for. Students were very mindful and reflective of the things that they wrote. We were able to differentiate this activity by having our lower elementary list things they were thankful for. Our upper elementary students wrote a couple things they were thankful for and explained why. We displayed the handprints on a large turkey within the hallway. Students loved to walk by and look at what other students were thankful for. Our amazing PTA also posted a picture of our turkey on our school’s Facebook page with a description of the project for our families to see!

Love

Love was the next P2 character strength that we created a school-wide project for. During the week, we learned about love and had students fill out what love means to them. Students used a heart to display what love means to them. Kindergartens drew pictures and 1st grade through 5th grade wrote a couple sentences. Teachers posted these hearts in the hallway. Our hallways were lined with hearts expressing different types of love. Students were able to see love is shown in many ways, even in ways they had never thought of. Love doesn’t just come from your family. This was a very eye opening activity for our students! All students felt loved and a sense of belonging.

Kindness

Kindness was another character strength where our school really shined this year. Our 4th grade class participated in Random Acts of Kindness. During the month of December they showed kindness in various ways. Their classes wrote letters to their previous teachers expressing their gratitude for the learning they achieved and how they positively impacted their lives. They wrote notes to their family members and friends. Their classes had a daily goal of doing at least five random acts of kindness. These acts included holding doors open for staff or other students, picking up trash off the playground, taking students to lost and found, and cleaning the lunchroom and hallways. They even spent their recess time helping our librarian organize books on the shelves, cleaning bookshelves and putting up decor in the library.

In this photo, the 4th graders wrote encouraging notes for a first grade class. They delivered these notes with a piece of candy. The first graders were so excited! They talked about the notes for weeks after and will still bring it up till this day. Our 5th graders sold candy grams during this week, the 4th grade class collected enough money to send every child and adult in our school a candy gram.

Creating a Common Language

Another school-wide implementation we started this year was using the morning announcement scripts. Our school loved that these scripts were differentiated based on elementary and secondary. We were looking to add an additional opportunity to discuss the P2 character strengths and revamp our morning announcements. These scripts were the perfect addition as they were an easy way to solidify our work within the classroom P2 Character Strength lessons. Our Kindergarten teachers even use the Pre K-K scripts in their morning meetings. We had our upper elementary students read the scripts daily.

Since incorporating the Announcement Scripts into our daily morning announcements we have really seen an increase in students using P2 language throughout the school. This has allowed our ancillary staff to also be mindful of what strength we are working on and they can incorporate it while working with students as well.