Getting Ready for RACK Week!

If you have been reading blogs recently, I know you have seen so many fabulous and inspiring examples of RACK: Random Acts of Christmas Kindness!

Check out Farley at Oh' Boy 4th Grade's post HERE.

Cara Carroll has a beautiful RACK advent calendar for her family HERE.

And my personal favorite, Judy at Kindertastic's HERE.


It is actually Judy's work that I am using this year for our class' RACK Week-we still have a full week to go before Winter Break, so I needed something to keep us kind and in the holiday spirit for the next five days :) Note: I teach in a public school and we have lots of diverse celebrations, so I changed the "Christmas" to "Classroom" :)

We started talking about this today by thinking about each of the words separately and also by brainstorming lots of ways we could practice Random Acts of Classroom Kindness both in and around our school. The kids were awesome at this and we linked it a lot to bucket filling and how, when we fill someone else's bucket, it fills ours up as well!


I then used Judy's awesome Google Docs to not only download her PDF, but to adjust her Word doc to make some that my kids brainstormed- specifically, writing notes and cards to our office staff, school nurse, custodians, bus drivers, principal, and more.

You know me, I love my buckets, so I made a quick bucket label and laminated the slips of paper to make sure they can be used over and over again.


Next week, starting on Monday morning and going through Friday, as soon as Morning Meeting is over, I am going to have kids pull a RACK idea from our bucket to do that day. They will then record it on their "RACK Tracker" and try to complete it by the end of day. Of course, if they want to do more, they absolutely can, and if they pull a duplicate one from a previous day, they can re-choose. I'm not going to be too strict and force them to do a RACK they don't want to do!

Here's a shot of the RACK Tracker that I'm going to copy onto green paper to feel more festive ;) I am having them do this just to keep their RACK in the forefront of their mind throughout the day and really work on intentionally practicing a different form of kindness each day.

Click the image above to download your free copy from Google Docs
It's pretty simple, but it should do the trick and I am so excited to get this underway!

If you are interested in RACK in your classroom, be sure to check out all of the links above and, if you are thinking you may want the "Class RACK" bucket label and RACK Tracker, download them for free from Google Docs HERE.

Happy Friday and I hope you have a wonderful weekend :)

**Update: I posted this morning not knowing how this day would end... who could have ever imagined? My heart goes out to all of the families, teachers, staff, students, and first responders in the Connecticut tragedy :'(


7 comments

  1. This is such a great idea, and something very much needed right now. I am going to post a link on my blog back to this post. I think all of our co-workers and especially our little ones will need some RACK's in the coming days. Thank you so much for sharing this idea.
    Amy
    Adventures In Teaching

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    1. Thanks, Amy. I could have never imagined how this week ended, but you're right, maybe focusing on RACK and bucket filling can help lift us and our kiddos up~ we'll definitely need it.

      Many thanks,
      Stephanie

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  2. I really like this RACK idea...where do you find your little buckets?

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  3. LOVE those ideas, Stephanie! (As usual!!) Going to make my RACK bucket first thing tomorrow! Thank you!

    Ashley
    The Balancing Act I Call Life

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  4. Thank you so much for sharing! We have been talking about "filling each other's bucket", so this fits in perfectly. Great ideas!

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  5. I love this idea! I also teach in a public school and because you changed Christmas to Classroom this could be used all year. What a great way to start off the new year!

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