Student Contributor: Claire Perry
This tool is incredibly helpful for many reasons. This tool gives the opportunity for students to lift other students up. Students may not hear a lot of nice things about them from their friends or family, so hearing a compliment can lift their spirits. This tool creates a strong and positive classroom community by uniting students in thinking positively about others.
This tool would be best used weekly or biweekly. I would use this tool every Tuesday and Friday afternoon most. Each student will be given a blank compliment card with someone else from the classes name on the top of it. The students will then have 5-10 minutes (depending on grade-level) to write a kind and uplifting compliment to their given student. Afterwards, these compliments are turned in to the box (for the teacher to read) and then each handed out to the student. I would use this tool every Tuesday and Friday afternoon for example. Their compliments can be about an act of kindness, a personal trait, or anything uplifting towards the student. Growing up, in 1st and 2nd-grade, I experienced a similar tool in my classrooms. The tool I experienced was a compliment book. Each week, there was one student of focus. When it was that students’ week, everyone else in the class, including the teacher, would draw a picture of that person and write 1-3 sentences about what they like about them. This was a fun and engaging activity. At the end of the week, the teacher would give the student of focus a book of all the students’ compliments/pictures for him or her.
As I mentioned above, this tool could fit into all three phases, but most closely relates to the supportive phase. It is in the supportive phase because it supports relationships, positive feelings towards one another, and a sense of community and belonging. This activity inspires student cooperation and personal interaction with other students. These students get the choice to write anything kind about their given peer.
It can fall under the preventive phase as well since creating relationships and kind feelings between students will prevent them from doing or saying harmful things. Establishing personal rapport between students can prevent negative situations and poor classroom behavior.
It can also fall under corrective phase for a similar reason above. Creating an activity that requires students to say something nice about another student will remind them that their peer is only human, everyone needs a friend, and there is something they like about them. This activity can help redirect students negative thinking about their Peer(s) into positive thinking.
More Information –
Tool Source: My mother (a current elementary teacher)
