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| RESPONSIBILITY |
| Quote of the Month: If each person sweeps in front
of his or her own door, the whole street is clean. - Yiddish
Proverb |
| Responsible
students .... |
- do what they're supposed to do.
- persevere and keep on trying!
- always do their best.
- use self-control and are self-disciplined.
- think before they act and consider the consequences.
- are accountable for their choices.
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| Making
An Allowance For Chores |
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Chores are a wonderful way to build and develop
responsibility.
At your next family meeting, why not discuss chores and responsibilities
at home. Bounce ideas off of each other. Have your child develop
a list of chores that he or she should be responsible for doing.
This is also a great opportunity to talk about allowance.
Here are some points to ponder:
*What chores is your child willing to do?
*How will your child keep track of chores?
*How often should chores be done?
*What are some rewards for doing the chores?
*What are some consequences for not completing them?
*Should your child get an allowance? If so, how often and how
much?
Helping with chores around the house should
not be optional. Everyone in the household should be able to
contribute in some sort of responsible way. The allowance decision,
however, is unique family by family. What is certain is that
it's never too early to lay a foundation for successful money
management. Talk with your child about spending and saving in
healthy proportions. This discussion can lead into a productive
talk about charitable giving as well.
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| CHORE
Bingo |
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You will need a CHORE
Bingo board pdf for each student.
At least 25 Bingo "chips" per student
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For a fun twist to an old favorite, why not
try CHORE Bingo? Brainstorm with your class a list of at least
30 chores, tasks, or responsibilities that they have at school,
at home, and in their community. If they get stuck, help them
realize that "doing my homework," "going to my
Scout meeting," or "soccer practice" are all responsibilities.
Once the list is complete, have students draw a 5 X 5 grid on
a piece of paper, making 25 spaces so that it looks like a BINGO
card (or download the CHORE board). Have them write CHORE across
the top; this will serve as their BINGO card. They will put a
FREE space in the middle square, then randomly fill in the squares
on their CHORE board with responsibilities from the list.
As they complete their boards, the teacher
will copy the list onto a piece of paper and cut the tasks into
strips that will be put into a pile and randomly drawn out during
the CHORE Bingo game. Students will each need at least 25 "chips"
that they'll use to cover the tasks as they hear a match; dried
beans, kernels of corn, pennies, or squares of construction paper
work well. Once students have their chips and have completed
their boards, you're ready to play.
The teacher or a student leader can select
a strip of paper with a task on it and read it aloud. If students
have this task on their CHORE Bingo board, they will cover it
up. Continue to draw tasks from the pile until a student gets
five in a row or four corners and the middle. The student who
achieves this goal first says, "CHORE" and has won
the game. You can also play rounds asking students to cover their
tasks in fun shapes like a T, a Y, a Z, etc. or play "Black
Out" where players have to cover all 25 squares to win.
Once you've played a few rounds, talk with students about what
happens in the game when they cover (or complete) their chores
and how that relates to their real life responsibilities.
NOTE: For a variation for younger kids, why
not try JOB Bingo? Have students make a 3X3 grid and fill it
with nine chores (or eight and a free homework pass!).
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| Managing
My Feelings |
| The responsibility
pillar says that responsible students use self control. Sometimes
that's a difficult task when feelings are involved. It's been
said that we don't choose our feelings, our feelings choose us.
What we can control is the thoughts that lead to the feelings
and the behaviors which follow. When I talk with students about
feelings, we look at ways to process feelings in healthy, appropriate
ways. |
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Take anger, for example. Students need to
know and believe that it's not bad to get mad. What gets us in
trouble, however, is if we don't manage the anger. A few simple
ways to do this are: counting to ten and back before we react,
taking a time-out to cool off, deep breathing to clear our minds,
and writing or drawing about what's making us so angry.
An interactive book to lead students into
the myriad of feelings through which they might journey is Dr.
Seuss' My Many Colored Days. Students enjoy sharing their
thoughts on what colors match their own unique feelings. This
little gem is also available on video so that students can hear
the orchestration and match music with their feelings.
After reading this masterpiece aloud and processing
it with students, try this little ditty, (sung to the tune of
"Old MacDonald Had A Farm") making the feeling faces
as you sing the feeling words:
My feelings are unique to me, that's just
the way I feel.
They change from day to day, you see,
They're mine, and that's the deal.
Sometimes I'm happy, sometimes sad,
Sometimes scared, and sometimes mad!
My feelings are unique to me, that's just the way I feel!
Encourage students to keep a feelings journal
to write or draw how they're feeling. Make sure they date the
pages so that they have a recordover time about which feelings
they're dealing with and when. Not only with this be good for
looking at feeling patterns, but students will also be able to
see when and how they've shown responsibility by effectively
managing their feelings and staying in control.
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| Responsibility
- What's At Stake? |
| We can't talk about
responsibility without talking about stakeholders. To get elementary-aged
students to understand the concept that every decision has stakeholders,
I often ask the question, "Who will care?" |
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Try this activity in your class and you'll
be amazed at what happens. Ask a question like, "Who will
care if you're late to a baseball game?" and then as the
kids answer, have them stand to represent that stakeholder. I'll
guess that before you've gone through all of the stakeholders,
each child in the class will be standing. Let's make a list:
the coach, your teammates, their parents, the other team's coach,
the other team, their parents, the umpires, the audience, the
team that plays after you, their coach, their parents, their
audience, their umpires, their opponent, their coach, their parents,
their audience - the list goes on and on. Talk about the power
of your decisions! If you're working with an intermediate or
middle school class, try something like, "Who will care
if you get into the
car with a driver who has been drinking?" The bigger we
are, it seems the bigger our decisions and their consequences
become.
Last summer, I was conducting a training in
Dallas and I used this activity with a group of educators to
illustrate the power of our decisions to affect stakeholders.
The prompt was based on a tragedy that had occurred in Baytown
weeks earlier; a 14-year-old girl snuck out one night and was
killed when the car she was a passenger in collided with a train.
I asked, "Who are the stakeholders in her decision to sneak
out that night?" As audience members answered things like
her parents, her siblings, her classmates, her grandparents,
the train driver, the doctor, the driver of the car, etc. and
standing to represent that stakeholder, a woman stood up and
said, "I actually am a real stakeholder in this girl's life;
I was her second-grade teacher." Miles and miles away from
the girl's home, there was one of her stakeholders. This activity
serves as a powerful visual; wrap it up by asking, "Who
are your stakeholders?"
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| Three
Pebbles And A Song |
| The entertaining
children's book, Three Pebbles and a Song, by Eileen Spinelli,
serves as an excellent resource to teach the responsibility pillar. |
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| Under strict orders,
an easily-distracted young mouse named Moses heads out into the
world to help his family by gathering for the winter. Along the
way, Moses gathers all right, but not the sort of things that
his father, mother, or sister feel like they need. When they
take inventory, everyone in his family has gathered something
useful to help them weather the season. But what does Moses contribute?
Your students will be pleasantly surprised by the ending of this
little tale. Find out if they think Moses did his job. Ask them
to support their opinion. Did it turn out okay that Moses' contribution
was important after all? Why or why not? Have students share
a time when they may not have followed instructions and done
their responsibility perfectly. What was negative about that
experience? Did anything positive come out of it? Why is it sometimes
important to be flexible? Ask students to write a paragraph changing
the ending, supposing that Moses had done exactly as he was told.
How would the winter have been different for Moses and his family? |
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| Responsibility
Reflections |
| Every morning, students
and faculty at Westwood pledge to "give my best effort in
all I do." But what does that mean exactly? What does "give
my best effort" look like? What does it feel like? |
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A simple way to find out is to ask your child
at the end of every day to give you two or three examples about
how they gave their best effort. Inquire about how it felt and
prompt them to reflect upon their positive choices and the positive
consequences that may have resulted. In the classroom, these
reflections could be done a writing center with fill-in-the-blank
half sheets that look something like this:
Today I gave my best effort when I ________________________.
It felt _______________ because ________________________.
It's imperative that students understand the
positive effects of giving their best effort. Want a visual to
illustrate this abstract concept? Try giving each student a domino
or rectangular block. As they stand it up on a table in front,
have them tell you a time that they gave their best effort and
how that felt. The next student can do the same, setting his
or her block upright, leaving a little space between it and the
one that's already there. After all of the blocks have been stood
upright next to one another, tap on the first one to show them
how one good deed can have a domino effect and set the stage
for positive things to happen.
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Character Counts at Westwood! One pillar at a time, we are laying the foundation
for a lifetime of good character choices. It is our goal to build
'value-able' citizens who will eventually become tomorrow's leaders.
The Six Pillars of Character are integrated into everything we
do.
We hope that the following list will help
you acquaint yourself with the Pillars and what they encompass
so that you can help us by reinforcing them at home.
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Westwood Pledge
I will make good choices today.
I will respect myself, my teachers, and
others.
And give my best effort in all I do.
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| Trustworthiness February / August |
| Trustworthy students.
. . . . |
- are honest; don't deceive, cheat, or steal.
- are reliable and do what they say they'll
do.
- have the courage to do the right thing.
- have a good reputation.
- are loyal - stand by their family, friends
and country.
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| Respect September / March |
| Respectful students.
. . . . |
- treat others with respect, follow the Golden
Rule.
- are tolerant of differences.
- use good manners, not bad language.
- are considerate of the feelings of others.
- don't threaten, hit or hurt anyone.
- deal peacefully with anger, insults and disagreements.
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| Responsibility October / April |
| Responsible students.
. . . . |
- do what they're supposed to do.
- persevere and keep on trying!
- always do their best.
- use self-control and are self-disciplined.
- think before they act and consider the consequences.
- are accountable for their choices.
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| Fairness January / July |
| Fair students.
. . . . |
- play by the rules, take turns and share.
- are open minded and listen to others.
- don't take advantage of others.
- don't blame others carelessly.
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| Caring December /J une |
| Caring students.
. . . . |
- are kind and compassionate and show they
care.
- express gratitude.
- forgive others.
- help people in need.
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| Citizenship November / May |
| Good Citizens.
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- do their share to make their school and community
better.
- cooperate.
- stay informed and vote.
- are good neighbors.
- obey laws and rules and respect authority.
- protect the environment.
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