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Cultivating a “garten” of Citizens<br />Christy Lundgren<br />TE 870, Fall 2010<br />

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Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS)<br />Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) is located North-East of Atlanta<br />The kindergarten social studies standards, which are called AKS (Academic Knowledge and Skills) in GCPS, incorporate many citizenship ideas.<br />

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Kindergarten Social Studies AKS<br />Of these standards Kindergartners are to: <br />Model good citizenship<br />Identify the purpose of national holidays and describe the people or events celebrated (including Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Columbus Day, and President’s Day)<br />Identify important American symbols and explain their meaning<br />Retell stories of people and explain how they show the qualities of honesty, patriotism, loyalty, courtesy, respect, truth, pride, self-control, moderation, and accomplishment<br />Identify issues and/or problems<br />And many others<br />See all social studies AKS here<br />

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Classroom link<br />I believe that the classroom provides a venue suitable for students to learn the expectations as a citizen<br />The behavior plan I use within my classroom is not only about managing, but also about teaching life skills<br />

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Defining behaviors<br />In the beginning days of a school year, my students and I define four different behaviors – Behavior A, Behavior B, Behavior C, and Behavior D<br />These four behaviors are posted in my room<br />These behaviors are based on Marvin Marshall’sDiscipline Without Stress, Punishments or Rewards.<br />The behaviors are linked with a book, Have You Filled a Bucket Today?<br />

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The Bucket Filler Philosophy<br />

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Have You Filled a Bucket Today? <br />In a new twist on the Golden Rule, Have You Filled a Bucket Today? explains to children that we all carry an invisible bucket in which we keep our feelings about ourselves. Is our bucket real? Yes! It represents our mental and emotional health. When our buckets are full, we are happy; when they are empty, we are sad. It's important to know that we can fill our own bucket and so can others. We can also dip into it.<br />(Taken from http://www.bucketfillers101.com/)<br />

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Bucket fillers vs. bucket dippers<br />What are bucket fillers?"Bucket fillers" are those who help without being asked, give hugs and compliments, and generally spread their love and good feelings to others. The simple metaphor of a bucket helps even preschoolers understand the importance of consideration and love, particularly towards those who bully.<br /> What are bucket dippers?<br /> "Bucket dippers" rob us of happy feelings by refusing to help with a task or by saying or doing cruel things. The challenging problem of "bullying" or "bucket dipping" usually rears its ugly head in the first few weeks of school. Why not address it in a positive, concrete manner through our book or our assemblies?<br />(Taken from http://www.bucketfillers101.com/)<br />

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Buckets meet behaviors<br />Using the four defined behaviors, students and I link the bucket filler philosophy. <br />The following four slides show the defined behaviors within my current classroom<br />

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Behavior A<br />

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Behavior B<br />

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Behavior C<br />

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Behavior D<br />

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Driving it home<br />Once the behaviors are defined, we complete other tasks that further support our learning. <br />

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Relation to the outside world?<br />My goal is to guide children to be intrinsically motivated. They do not need a reward or a piece of candy. While I may notice them and compliment their behavior, the end goal is that students learn to do things for themselves. We all have the opportunity to make choices. The type of choice we make is at each individual’s discretion. <br />An underlying connection that I attempt to have students see is that we can each do more with the help of our neighbor. <br />

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Mini Society <br />Our classroom acts as the location for students to practice a skill before using it in the “real world”<br />After learning about our community (helpers and places within it), students took part in working in a factory job<br />

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Holiday Factories<br />In December I complete a Holiday Factories unit with my students. Throughout this economics unit, students work at a factory job to create a craft. For each day’s work they earn a wage, paid to them in pennies. At the end of the week, students use their earnings to go shopping for their families.<br />

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Holiday Factories<br />Trouble viewing? Click here<br />

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Holiday Factories<br />This unit allows students to experience many of the basic concepts related to economics<br />Through the factories, children learn to take pride in their work, cooperate with others, describe the work that they do, and explain how and why they earn their wage and bonus<br />At the unit’s conclusion, students must make decisions while shopping to determine how they will spend their money. They do not have enough to buy one of everything or all that they want<br />

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Skills for life<br />The following poem references the many skills learned in Kindergarten that are necessary for the rest of your life. Of these, many directly relate to working with others.<br />

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Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum<br />Most of what I really need to know about how to live and what to do, and how to be, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sandbox at nursery school. These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life. <br />

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Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum<br />Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the plastic cup? The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the plastic cup -- they all die. So do we. And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: look. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living. Think what a better world it would be if we all -- the whole world -- had cookies and milk about 3 o'clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation and other nations to always put things back where we found them and cleaned up our own messes. And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together. <br />

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A Year of learning<br />Through defining behaviors as well as the holiday factories, students learn of life outside of the classroom. Kindergarten is year full of learning, not just academic knowledge, but also life skills. In Kindergarten, students must learn to collaborate, respect each other, and discover internal motivation, all of which are important for success in the real world.<br />