This is the time of year when
the fur can start to fly in the classroom. As the year winds down, standardized
tests and exams lead to frustration. Conditions are ripe for feuding friends
and hard feelings.
My current fourth graders
are the most delightful children, but after 30 weeks of togetherness, the seeds
of discontent were being sewn. Despite the best efforts of my colleagues and
myself to keep things calm, it was getting rocky.
A small click of girls had been
on the outs for a week: Someone didn’t want to play tag on the playground, but
while the others were playing, someone else waved, but someone didn’t wave
back, which meant that someone else was pretty sure that no one liked anyone
anymore, and now no one wanted to be friends. You follow, don’t you? Ten year
olds can’t remember to tie their shoes, but they have no problem forgetting a
slight on the playground days ago.
So how does that tie into
writing, you may ask…
About the same time the
drama was flaring up, my colleague, Mrs. Kathy Zimmermann, was reading Horrible
Harry with a friend. Horrible Harry and his classmates were in the throes of
similar circumstances. The solution of the teacher in the book was one Mrs.
Zimmermann wisely suggested that we try something similar. I was all for it. One
more day of snappish children would surely put me over the edge!
With about a week to go
until Easter recess, we launched the Secret Pal project. Each student made a
little bucket, a pail, (we were going for a pal/pail play on words) put their
name on it, decorated them with stickers, and hung them in various spots around
the room. Then we did a random drawing of names. The name drawn was that
student’s secret pal.
Each day for the next week,
the students observed their secret pal’s behavior. When they noticed that
person being kind in some way, they jotted it on a little slip of paper and
placed it in the person’s pail. They had to be surreptitious when placing the
slip in the pails. That proved to be as much fun as anything!
Each student had a packet of
letterhead, one page per day of the project. On these pages they wrote some
very nice letters and words of encouragement for their pals. This is a type of
writing that almost has become a lost art. We were very glad to revive it among
our fourth graders.
On the last day of the
project, we did a “big reveal.” Students retrieved their own pails and read the
small notes within. They tried to determine from those notes the identity of
their secret pal. Only two of my 24 students actually were able to correctly
identify their pal. After each guess, the true identity of the secret pal was
revealed. At that time, the packet of letters was given to the student by their
pal. There were many, many surprised looks and smiles as the students read.
This project was a definite keeper,
worth doing again. It was easy to set up, and students got to know each other
even better. All went away with the glow of kind words surrounding them.
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