The basic idea is that we all have an invisible bucket. We want to fill our buckets with positive feelings about ourselves. When we say nice words or do nice things for people, it fills their buckets, and it also fills ours in return. If we say hurtful words or do something unkind, it dips from other's buckets.
We talked about how we can be bucket fillers or bucket dippers in our classroom and school. The students instantly provided great examples of how we can be bucket fillers or bucket dippers at school. Then we made our own little buckets. We put them on a shelf in the classroom. We have little slips of paper we can fill out to recognize when others fill our buckets, or to make comments that will fill up other students' buckets. The students were very excited to start filling out the sheets and filling up other students' buckets. On Friday students got to look into their buckets and read their slips. They were very excited to see what their friends had written.
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| Our little buckets that we made and decorated |
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| Slips we fill out to put in each other's buckets. |
We will continue to do this throughout the year. We want to fill not only our small buckets in the classrooms, but more importantly, we want to fill each other's invisible buckets. Students are also starting to use this vocabulary in their communication with each other, such as "I don't like that. You are dipping from my bucket." I also tell the students regularly when their words and actions are filling my bucket or (occasionally) dipping from my bucket. I think this will be a powerful system for our classroom community this year.
