Welcome to 2013! Are you a Bucket Filler or a Bucket Dipper?

With the start of a fresh new year comes the opportunity to make a fresh start in my classroom. While I'm not exactly jumping for joy at the thought of returning to school tomorrow, I am excited for the chance to make some changes in my classroom. One of the first changes that I want to make has to do with the way my students interact with each other. I noticed before break that many of my students weren't being very positive or encouraging towards each other so I want to implement something to turn that around.

A couple of years ago our guidance counselors introduced a book to all the students in our school called Have You Filled a Bucket Today?. It is a cute and colorful picture book that discusses how rewarding it can be to show daily kindness and appreciation to others. This is called "Bucket Filling". It also talks about how saying and doing mean things to each other can empty someone's bucket, "Bucket Dipping".

Last year I created a bulletin board based on this book. Each of my students decorated a picture of a bucket and then glued it on a brown paper bag. I hung the bags up on the bulletin board and students could just drop in their bucket fillers. To introduce the bulletin board each student had to write a bucket filler on a slip of paper for every person in our class. This was a great way to get them thinking of ways to be positive about everyone in our class. (Let's face it, some people are more challenging to be positive about than others.) Once we did this I just kinda left it and students were free to fill each other's buckets as they chose.

I am hoping to improve on this idea for this year. I want to make the bucket filler display more compact so that it doesn't take up the entire bulletin board in the back of my classroom. I've found some ideas on Pinterest using library book pockets that might work nicely. Another one of the changes that I want to make is to have the students fill each others buckets more than just when I introduce the display. I'm also thinking about incorporating it as a consequence. When the students are making unkind comments to each other then they will have to fill that person's bucket for a week, fill everyone's bucket, or something else along those lines.

I hope to post pictures of my bucket filling display once I get it created. Please check back for an update of how the bucket filling is going in my classroom.