An afternoon circle can be a difficult event to navigate. Your mind is on a million other things like students packing up, assigning homework, ensuring students get home on the correct bus, getting your list of daily to-do's finished and crossed off for the day. However, afternoon circle is a MUST to help boost your student's Social Emotional Learning. Your afternoon circle doesn't have been lengthy if you are limited on your time. An essential part of my afternoon circle revolves around asking my students two questions every single day during afternoon circle.
After the students share how they felt and why, I ask the students "What did you do to someone that was kind?". I have the students reflect on their entire day. If I see students struggling to think of something I mention specific events that I noticed to help guide them. Students often don't realize that many of their actions are kind, they just aren't acknowledged as kind in the moment because of the hustle and bustle of a classroom. My students share how they were kind to someone and the smiles on their face warm my heart so much! My students have shared that they want to do even more kind acts each day so that they have more to share each day.
The second question I ask is "What did someone do to you that was kind?'. This question is just as powerful, if not more powerful than the students realizing what kind act they did. Reflecting on how other people were kind to them without them even realizing causes them to be more thankful when kind acts occur daily. The amount of "thank yous" have greatly increased as a result of this question because students are realizing that so many small acts done by their classmates are kind acts that deserve appreciation and acknowledgement.
By adding these two questions to your afternoon meeting, or using these questions to start an afternoon meeting, will greatly impact your students Social Emotional Learning. It will also help spread kindness within your classroom, and hopefully your entire building! Check out the posters I created that I use to prompt my student's reflections! Visit my TeachersPayTeacher's store to purchase them for your classroom!
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