The Great Kindness Challenge 2024 Activities, Small Acts of Kind, Middle school

January 22-26 is The Great Kindness Challenge Week! Empower your students to create a positive impact in the lives of those around them with this bundle of engaging and meaningful activities for The Great Kindness Challenge week! Throughout the week, students complete a series of activities where they plan out a act of kindness to perform on someone in their life. At the end of the week, students create one visual slide to represent their experience. Students then share their experiences with the class. Students love sharing their experiences and are inspired by their positive experiences to continue their acts of kindness throughout the rest of the school year. These activities are meant for grades 6-12 and are meant to be completed throughout the Great Kindness Challenge Week.

The Great Kindness Challenge Lesson Activities:

The Great Kindness Challenge: Teaching Slideshow:

You will use this slideshow to guide each lesson activity. The slides are engaging and step-by-step so that students are led through each activity. The slides include discussion-based activities so that students collaborate with their peers regarding ideas they have for how they will spread acts of kindness throughout the week.

The Great Kindness Challenge: Article & Questions

This Google Document assignment is the first activity that students will complete. Students read experts from a research-based article from The Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkley. The article teaches students about how doing kind acts for others improves one's physical and mental health. As students read the article they answer reflective questions embedded throughout the article to practice close reading skills. This activity is aligned with ELA reading standards.

The Great Kindness Challenge: Planning Doc.

This Google Document assignment is meant to be completed on the second day of the Great Kindness Challenge Week. During this activity, students begin brainstorming one act of kindness that they will perform on someone in their life. Students choose their person, determine their act of kindness, and create an actionable plan to implement their act of kindness. This activity holds students accountable for their acts of kindness and also helps them plan a day and time outside of class to fulfill their acts of kindness. Many students end up choosing more than one person in their life to share their acts of kindness with. It is really special to see how invested and excited students feel about completing their acts of kindness.

The Great Kindness Challenge: Student Visual Slide Template

After fulfilling their acts of kindness, students then create one slide using the template provided that demonstrates their overall experience with their act of kindness. The slide includes prompts for students to fill in about their experiences as well as a space to add a visual image. Once students are finished with this step, they add their slide to the classroom slideshow. This is a fun way for students to share their experiences with the rest of the class. Once all students are finished, we hold a whole class discussion where we review their slides and students volunteer to speak about their experience with their act of kindness. This is a really meaningful day because students report feeling fulfilled and inspired to continue their acts of kindness! The final step of this week is to write a reflective paragraph about their week.

The Great Kindness Challenge: Teacher Instructions Page

The included teacher instructions page has step-by-step instructions with visuals to support you with facilitating each activity throughout the week of The Great Kindness Challenge to ensure that you feel supported. :)

➡️More Social-Emotional Learning Activities:

- Reflective Journaling for Mental Health: This is a bi-weekly reflective journaling activity to support students' mental health and create a routine for your digital classroom.

-Creative Writing Project Google Classroom: This is a three-day creative writing lesson. Students review several literary devices and complete practice activities in preparation for the final creative writing piece.

⭐️Follow On-the-Go English Teacher for more engaging resources like this one!