Detailed Lesson Preparation Guide

Elementary Education
Name: Katie Miller

Title: How Full Is Your Bucket?

Grade: 2nd grade

Concept/Topic: Empathy

Time Needed: 30 minutes

Identify Desired Results/Learning Outcome/Essential Question:

Students will define kindness, empathy and friendship.
Students will demonstrate kindness empathy and friendship to their peers by
writing bucket fillers.

NCSCOS Standards:
RL2.2 Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures,
and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.
RL2.3 Describe how characters in a story respond to major events
and challenges.
2.C.1.3 Exemplify respect and appropriate social skills needed for working
with diverse groups.

Assessment Plan:
To gauge the students understanding of how their interactions have effects
on the people around them, we will have a class discussion after the book
circled around the main idea of the book. The conversation implemented
about kindness and friendship, will allow the teacher to determine if the
classroom as a whole is understanding what filling/emptying another
persons bucket means. This discussion, as well the implementation of
filling their peers buckets, will serve as an informal assessment of the
understanding of what spreading kindness can look like.

Prior Knowledge/Connections:
Students already have experience with talking about empathy, as it is apart
of their school motto. The students will be able to take their personal
experiences, to contribute to the conversation of what makes their bucket
feel full or empty. Their knowledge of what empathy means, will allow them
to make the connections with how we can show empathy and spread
kindness to others through our own actions.
Lesson Introduction/Hook:
The lesson will begin by reading How Full Is Your Bucket? For Kids. written
by Tom Rath and Mary Reckmeyer and illustrated by Maurie J. Manning.

Differentiation/Same-ation:
Students turn to talk with partners while reading the book, as well as take
part in a class discussion about kindness and friendship. After, the students
each write notes about their peers. Every student has individual work, as
well as the opportunity to contribute to both the whole class discussion and
partner talks.

Lesson Development:
The lesson begins by reading How Full Is Your Bucket? For Kids. written by
Tom Rath and Mary Reckmeyer and illustrated by Maurie J. Manning.
Throughout the book, there are moments of questioning and turn to partner
talks (see specific questioning) regarding friendship and empathy. After the
book, the students are directed by to their seats and are given 3-4 slips of
paper called the bucket fillers. The student writes their name, who they are
complimenting, and a small positive note to them. In order to maintain
classroom management, I will have the names of each child in the class, pre-
written on three notes. Each table will then be given a pile of notes, with the
choice of which peers they would like to write about. This also ensures that
each student will be written about 3 times each, to avoid some having more
than others. In the back of the classroom, will be pre-cut buckets made of
out of grey construction paper with a students name on each one. Once the
students finish their notes, they will go to the back of the room and paste
their slips on the bucket of the people they wrote about. At the end, each
student will have a bucket with 3 notes from their peers with positive and
kind words about them.

Optional: I will be writing a bucket filler for each student as well.

Recommended: After the book, talk with the kids about what appropriate
notes to their peers would sound like, helping them come up with different
things to say.

Specific Questioning:
During book:
What is causing drips to fall out Felixs bucket?
Have you ever felt like your bucket is empty?
How did that make you feel?
What is causing drops to fill Felixs bucket?
Have you ever felt like your bucket was full?
How did that make you feel?
What are ways to help fill someone elses bucket?

After book:
What are some things we could say about our peers to fill their bucket?

New Vocabulary:
Kindness: the quality of being friendly, generous, and considerate.
Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Friendship: the emotions or conduct of friends; the state of being friends.

Concluding the Lesson/Closure/Debriefing:

Once the students each have their own buckets with the notes, I would like a
couple students to share something that their peers said about them. This
allows for them to share what filled their bucket, and the person that wrote it
can see how being kind to someone else also makes them feel good. In
conclusion, we will have short class discussion on how they should keep this
lesson in mind with every interaction that they have.

Materials/Resources:
-construction paper, grey and blue
-pencils or markers
-scissors
-glue sticks
-bucket filler slips (attached)

Teaching Behavior Focus:

-Learners interests and experiences are acknowledged and integrated into
discussion
-Providing response opportunities
-Questioning utilizes cues and feedback
-Provides clear directions
-Classroom management is positive and appropriate

Follow-Up Activities/Parent Involvement

Make a classroom Social Action Plan to promote friendship, kindness and
empathy.