This post details some of the things that we’ve done in my classroom in recent weeks to help my students better understand what it means to care about something. This is one effective way to teach about caring.
Caring. It is really easy to assume that our young students understand this, but I’ve come to realize recently that this isn’t the case.
Recently, my students have had a lot of trouble getting along, and I’ve found myself giving far too many reminders about the state of our classroom.
It has felt like they just don’t care.
It has become a priority for me to help my kiddos learn how to take action to show they care about the world around them.
I started this with a serious discussion during our class meeting. I told my students that my heart was sad because it felt like they didn’t care. They didn’t care enough to stop and listen when asked. They didn’t care enough to pick up food or garbage off our classroom floor. They didn’t care enough to be kind to one another.
I wanted them to understand the impact of this.
I asked my students to think of something at home that really means a lot to them. It could be a person, a thing, something they love to do, anything that they really care about. Then, we talked about the things they do to show that they care about these things. This was relatively easy for all of my students to do.
Next, we made the leap into school and classroom ideas. I asked them about what they could do to show that they care about their teachers, their learning, their work, our classroom, their classmates, and our school.
Here are the results of our brainstorming:
We’ve posted these on the wall and refer to them often.
From here, I asked my students to choose just one thing that they care about at school to use to create a poster. You could assign particular topics of need and importance in your own classroom, but to get my students to care about this task, I felt choice was necessary.
I was correct. The posters they created were fantastic. We have seen a little improvement in the climate of our classroom since starting these discussions, and we will continue with this language in the coming weeks and months.
Take a look at the posters on my Instagram profile. Be sure to click through to see several others!
If you’d like to try this in your own classroom, you can grab the free poster template in my Freebie Library! Log in with the password if you are already an email subscriber, or enter your info here to gain access:
You can also see how we’ve discussed caring for our Guest Teachers with this co-created anchor chart:
Before you go, be sure to drop a comment below sharing your own strategies for teaching students about caring!
You might also be interested in my resources for supporting students with their feelings and emotions, available right here in my Teachers Pay Teachers store:
If you are new to Teachers Pay Teachers (my all-time favorite site for teaching resources!), you can set up a free account here!
Be sure to check out this blog post with five great strategies for getting student attention in your classroom!
Find more great character education and classroom management resources and ideas on this Pinterest board:
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