Student Contributor: M. Shrope
This tool is helpful because it is a way to start your mornings off on a good note as well as to check in on your student’s mental mindset as they are beginning their school day. It is also a helpful way to get to know your students and their interests.
The way I suggest this tool be used is first thing in the morning once the bell has rung and your kids are in their seats to do a singing echo with your students singing “ tell me something goooooodddd”, they then raise their hands and tell you something good that is going on in their lives, something they are excited for, basically anything positive happening right now. The kids all take turns being respective listeners to each other. As a teacher, you are merely the facilitator. You call on the students to talk and offer positive feedback. In the higher grades, the students could probably call on the next person after they are done talking. The kids love this part of the day as well as from a teacher’s standpoint it makes you feel really happy starting the morning off with all these happy thoughts. I have also been able to make so many more personal connections with the students through what they share in this time. All students are not required to share something good but, from my experience almost everybody shares every morning.
I think this would fit best in the preventative phase because learning has not yet started taking place. This tool gets everyone in a positive headspace to start the day out and prevents the kids from carrying in negative baggage they might have from outside of school time. This tool adds to the classroom community as well which we know helps the student build relationships that can further down the road prevent bigger problems from happening. This would fall under the student-directed and collaborative theory because it is a joint effort during this time to keep it running smoothly. The students have to follow the listening and speaking expectation of the classroom while the teacher facilitates. I think if you were in the older grades, and they were to call on one another after they got done talking instead of the teacher doing that then it could be more student-centered.
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Tool Source: This idea came from my mentor teacher who got it from a radio show that has a segment every morning based on this.
I used this tool in my placement that is an urban, first grade classroom, with about 20 students each time we did it. This tool was easy to prepare for since the teacher, as mentioned in the post, is merely the facilitator. It is p to the students to share and the only job the teacher has is to call on students and listen to what they have to say. It was useful from a teacher standpoint because I would have students tell me they did not want to share or did not have something positive. I found it insightful before the day started to get an understanding of my students on an emotional level before the day started. My students were excited to share each day and after doing it a few times I noticed we had more people volunteering to start us off. We all knew we were working on community building so there was also more people commenting on each other’s positivity which boosts the classroom community. The only adjustment I made was that we did it in a circle at the carpet rather than in our seats to make people more connected and feeler closer to one another.
Kindergarten, 20 students, Suburban
This tool was pretty easy for me to prepare for, teach, and use in my classroom because it does not take away time for their learning it can just be used in break times. This is something that can be done every single morning to set the students up for a good mindset for the day. Every morning after morning message the students go to the carpet for read aloud, so this could be a perfect time that this tool is implemented into the day. It does not have to take any longer than 5 minutes and it would allow all of the students to share if they wanted to.
I noticed that the students were super engaged in this activity and they loved being able to share out loud something good going on in their life. Right away, everyone raised their hand and wanted to share so that was helpful for me because I did not have to force anyone to talk. I thought this was a good way for students to be able to set their mind up for a positive outlook on the day. I found success in it because I have quite a few students that struggle to stay focused throughout the day, so this helped them.
The students understood their role with the new tool because they were reminded of the carpet rules at the beginning of the activity and then they all raised their hand before they started speaking. They also knew that they needed to be sharing something good going on in their life since that was the point of the activity. I thought there was going to be a possibility that students would just copy what their classmates were saying, so I reminded them to try and come up with something on their own. After they were told that, they understood their role.
This could be something that is implemented at the end of the day as well as the beginning. It would allow for students to start their morning off on a good note as well as end their day by reflecting on what went well. This helps students learn from their actions whether they were positive or negative. Another adjustment might be to try and change it from teacher centered where we are the facilitator of the conversation to student centered where someone different in the class is the one leading the activity every day.
This tool to no preparation at all, which was really awesome! The only work it really took was explaining to students what to do when they hear me sing, “Tell me something good” and finding the perfect time to do so. We decided to use this management tool during our morning meeting, which occurs after students get time to settle in and get their jitters out using morning tubs. Using this tool created a more positive learning environment, prevented non-sense talking during learning time and allowed us to create a more “family” environment in the class. I think that to make this even better, would be allowing students to comment on the good things that their classmates share, I feel that it may make the feeling of it a being a community even more
I implemented this tool in my 8th grade science classroom at an urban school with class periods ranging from 15-25 students. This tool was easy to use as it required no materials and allowed students time to share something good or exciting happening in their lives at the moment. It was easy to get student participation because it did not require much effort to think about. I used this tool in the mornings as well and once students settled in and began working on their morning task I went around each table and asking them one at a time to share, then moved on to the next group. This soon became something my students were looking forward to and wanted to share as soon as they walked into the door before me getting a chance to walk over to their table. The student’s role during this implemented routine was to listen and be respectful to their peers as they shared and think of something positive even when having a bad day because the glass is always half full not empty. Some adjustments I would make in the future, as stated in the description of this tool, is making it a whole class activity where all the students are sharing and listening as a whole instead of in groups like I did by walking to each table. The reason I did it that way was to take less time away from class, but I really think students will benefit from engaging in this as a whole class and bring everyone together. Overall, this tool was a big success in my classroom and my students love to share and I think it has really help them start their day off on a positive note and has them look for the next good thing to happen so they can share.