My school year is rapidly coming to an end. Yes, I still have five more weeks left and so many exciting things I want to do with my students, but the reality is our time together is passing by far too quickly.
My class is nothing short of the most amazing six and seven year olds. They are very typical children with various needs but as a collective group they are a wonderful, caring, curious, hard working bunch of students. They have taught me so many things this year.
Today they noticed a little thing, but it was a little thing that will have a huge impact on others. Today when we walked into the computer lab my students noticed a kidblog address that ended with their big buddies teacher's name. "Hey, Ms. Lirenman our big buddies have blogs. Can we leave them comments?" How incredible was that.
My grade one students knew that in the past their big buddies didn't have their own blogs. My class figured out that these must be new blogs for their big buddies and they wanted to do something for them. As soon as they were logged in they headed straight over to the grade five blog to find their big buddies so that they could leave them comments. It was the simplest yet most precious thing they did today. They know how much they love to receive comments, and so they felt it was important to leave their grade five big buddies comments too.
I can't wait for the grade fives to see their special comments from their special six and seven year old friends.
It really is all about the little things. Happy May 22nd everyone. From where I stand it certainly was a day that was filled with smiles.
Sounds like a day that makes a teacher's heart sing.
It totally was. If you can't tell I am so proud of the transformation I have seen from my students this year.
Hi, Nice learning blog thanks for sharing. Would you please consider adding a shout out to my website on your next post? I will return the favor. Please email me back. Thanks!
What a joy. What a wonderful way to see the impact you've made on these little minds. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Kimberley. I am so proud of how far my class has come this year. They continue to surprise me with their awesomeness each and every day.
Karen, I absolutely love this story! You've obviously taught your students as much about character as about academics. Students realize the value in supporting each other and even supporting the older students at the school. I think that sometimes we can forget the importance of this.
How can we help develop this good character in all of our students? How can we teach students the importance of supporting others? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!
For me it all comes down to creating a classroom environment that is safe and supportive. It's about teaching children how to be respectful of others even when you don't agree with them or when they make you mad. That's been huge with my class this year and when I see signs of disrespect I immediately stop and talk about it. Sometimes it's a simple 1:1 conversations and other times it's a whole group lesson but always doing my best to keep the dignity of all my students in tact. I also model a lot. I make mistakes too and I apologize when I do. I use many different strategies to help my students be in control of their learning and I stress, over and over again, that they aren't doing what they are doing for me, they are doing it for themselves. Really Aviva it's a bunch of things but genuinely caring about the people in my classroom helps me keep everything in perspective.