Performing acts of kindness has earned class 4M at Wingham Public School the title of NSW winners of the Choose Kind Classroom Challenge.
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This term 4M have been studying the novel Wonder by R. J. Palacio. The book’s hero is a boy named August who has Treacher Collins syndrome. He begins going to a new school where he faces a lot of new challenges.
Class teacher, Sharon Middleton said the book has helped her students in learning about kindness and empathy for others.
Sharon and her class decided to pledge to join together to take the Choose Kind Challenge, and fill a far with ‘kindness’ marbles.
One marble equated to one act of kindness to someone in the classroom or the playground. Acts of kindness were as simple as opening a door for someone, sharing, or even saying hello to someone who isn't their friend. It took the class two weeks to fill their kindness jar.
Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.
- Mother Theresa
“Once we filled our jar we had to come up with a class precept. This was a quote or words that we thought we could carry with us as we leave year four and head to stage three next year,” Sharon said.
Sharon and her class chose a quote by Mother Theresa:
‘Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.’
“We chose this quote because we felt that if we all speak kindly to everyone we meet, like an echo, our kindness would spread outside our classroom,” Sharon said.
Sharon was informed on Tuesday November 21 via email that the class was the NSW winner of the Choose Kind Classroom Challenge.
“From 400 schools and 17,000 students that entered the challenge, our class won the challenge in NSW,” Sharon said.
The entertainment company Roadshow have made a movie based on the book Wonder, and class 4M’s prize will be a private screening of the movie at Fays Twin Cinemas in Taree.