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1st, 2nd Grades  Project 2 weeks

Kindness Quest Classroom Challenge

Tracy F
Updated
VA:Cn10.1.1a
VA:Pr5.1.1a
TH:Cr1.1.a
TH:Pr6.1.a
MA:Pr5.1.1.c
+ 5 more
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Purpose

Students investigate what kindness looks and sounds like in real classroom situations and use art, drama, and simple media-making to invent a tool that helps classmates care for one another. Working in teams, they identify a classroom problem, listen to different ideas, and design a kindness catcher, kindness spinner, or helper kit that can be used every day. Through reflection on their acts of kindness, students learn how kind choices affect others and improve their designs before sharing them with families at a school event.

Learning goals

Students will identify what kindness looks and sounds like in different classroom situations and use drama, movement, and discussion to explore caring choices characters and classmates can make. They will work in teams to identify a classroom problem, listen to one another, share ideas, and design a simple kindness invention such as a kindness catcher, spinner, or helper kit using drawing, art, and media-making tools. Students will prepare their invention and kind messages for presentation to families, explaining when, where, why, and how their work helps others in school and beyond. They will reflect on their acts of kindness and how their invention can help build a kinder classroom community.

Standards
  • [National Core Arts Standards] VA:Cn10.1.1a - Identify times, places and reasons by which students make art outside of school.
  • [National Core Arts Standards] VA:Pr5.1.1a - Ask and answer questions such as where, when, why, and how artwork should be prepared for presentation or preservation.
  • [National Core Arts Standards] TH:Cr1.1.a - Propose potential choices characters could make in a guided drama experience (e.g., process drama, story drama, creative drama).
  • [National Core Arts Standards] TH:Pr6.1.a - With prompting and support, use movement and gestures to communicate emotions in a guided drama experience (e.g., process drama, story drama, creative drama).
  • [National Core Arts Standards] MA:Pr5.1.1.c - Experiment with and share different ways to use tools and techniques to construct media artworks.
Competencies
  • Creative Contributer - Interprets experiences, imagines and plays with new possibilities with curiosity, and creates approaches that are novel, useful, and valued by the world around them.
  • Engaged Citizen - Shows respect and empathy across differences, embraces diversity of opinion, seeks cultural understanding, participates in the democratic process to challenge the status quo, and makes a positive impact on their community and the world.
  • Productive Collaborator - Engages with others to achieve a common goal through building positive relationships, actively listening, showing empathy, and making individual contributions to a larger group.
  • Empowered Learner - Demonstrates mastery and application of academic competencies. Develops the skills and dispositions to persist through difficulties and plan for a future of self-improvement.
  • Effective Communicator - Engages diverse audiences respectfully by exchanging ideas and information responsibly, listening actively, speaking and writing clearly, and using print and digital media appropriately.

Products

Students will create planning sketches, simple labeled designs, and short role-play scenes to test ideas for what kindness looks like and sounds like in different classroom situations. In teams, they will build one kindness invention such as a kindness catcher mailbox for kind notes, a kindness spinner with prompts for helpful actions, or a kindness helper kit with encouragement cards, friendship coupons, and calm-down ideas. Along the way, they will make presentation pieces such as signs, decorations, and directions for how their invention should be used and shared. By the end, each group will present its finished product to families at the Title I event and share reflections about what they learned from acts of kindness.

Launch

Begin with a short teacher-led skit showing two versions of the same classroom problem, one unkind and one kind, and have students use movement and facial expressions to show how each version feels. Next, invite students to notice what kindness looks like and sounds like in different situations, then sort picture cards or act out quick examples such as inviting someone to play, helping clean up, or giving an encouraging note. As a class, introduce the challenge by revealing a few “kindness invention” prototypes like a kindness catcher mailbox, a kindness spinner, and a kindness helper kit, and ask which classroom problems each invention could solve. Close with a circle reflection where students share one act of kindness they have seen or received and one idea for how the class can learn from kind acts over the next two weeks.

Exhibition

During the Title I family event, students can host a “Kindness Invention Showcase” where small groups display their kindness catcher, kindness spinner, or kindness helper kit and explain how it solves a classroom problem. Students can demonstrate their product by role-playing kind and unkind situations, using gestures, movement, and simple scripts to show what kindness looks and sounds like. Families can visit each station, try the inventions, and write a kind note to add to the catcher or test a spinner prompt so students see their ideas used by a real audience. End with a short class share-out where students reflect on what they learned from acts of kindness and how their inventions can keep helping the classroom community.