Habits of Mind

This week we have really focused on the 16 Habits of Mind. We went through a list of a bunch of ways to bring the Habits of Mind to our school and ranked them as either Already Doing It, a Good Possibility, A Must (implement immediately), or Unlikely (it won't fly). I found myself marking several Unlikely because our school already just put a new behavior system in place that making a change right now would be a challenge. I think there is certainly the possibility in a few years when this one gets worn out. I am happy to say there were a good about of Alreadys and a lot of Possibilities. The list was very encouraging to read.

A Must that I choose to act on right away was to talk about heroes in my life and ask students to share heroes in their own lives. Our school uses the HERO acronym to remind us that we was to focus on Helping Everyone Respect Others. It is common for kids to point out HERO behavior but this week we put the 16 Habits of Mind spin on things. I had the kids pick one hero in their life and write a few sentences about why they were chosen. Then we looked at the 16 Habits and had kids write down a number (or several) on their paper of which Habits their hero showed. It was fun to listen to them talk about whether or not the hero displayed particular Habits. We then shifted to how we can be "Habit Heroes" at school and at home. This is something we can continue touching on for the rest of the year.