You Are a Gift

This is such a touching project that I stole from my friend Heather (she even hand-made a poster for each student in our class!).  If you need a fun way to lift up your students, help them think positively, increase their adjective use, develop their writing, and just make everyone feel loved, this is the easy, 15 minute project for you!

All you need for this project is large, white construction paper.  You, or a fabulous parent volunteer, just write each student's name as "_____- You are a gift."  Add a little bow to it, and they're ready for the class.

 

 We laid them on each student's desk before they arrived in the morning.  Each student walked around to the other students' desk and wrote a complete sentence about why they appreciate that person or qualities they enjoy.  On the board, I had a list of positive attributes and some sentence stems, like:
 I appreciate how you are ______ and ___________.
You are always _____, __________, and __________, and I love that.
Two admirable traits you have are _______ and ____________.
______, I like how you ______________.
Leave a comment below or check my TeachersPayTeachers account for the free Word document that I typed up for this project.  Students just choose a sentence, the attributes they feel fit the person, and sign their own name.  The goal is for each student to write at least one sentence on everyone's poster.

  It's just that simple.  We decided to put ours up in the hallway; one of the morning tasks will be for each student to go and read everything that people wrote on their poster.  Eventually, each student will take their poster home to keep.  These are the types of things that many kids hang on to for a long time; you never know what might make a difference for students, even years down the road.

 

Leave a comment with how you might use this, or tell us about something that you do to lift someone else up!