Red Ribbon Week

Last week, my school celebrated Red Ribbon Week with the help of my student group, the Peacemakers.  The Peacemakers are a group of students that promote positive behavior and relationships through school wide activities.  This week was a huge success, especially with our plans being implemented according to plan!  I got an idea from the website, corner on character, and Barbara has some amazing ideas.  She decided to incorporate Character Counts and Red Ribbon Week, and I thought I'd do the same.  Our Logo for this year was "Character is my anti Drug."  I created a bulletin board with the core character traits that I focus on in my monthly classroom lessons and attached a superhero to each trait.  I hoped this would attract students attention to connect character traits to superheros!  The weekly activities are listed below:

Character Is Our Anti-Drug

October 22-25

Monday, October 22: Kick-off Assembly Character is Our Anti-Drug.  Socks off to Drugs. Students will wear silly socks to school.

Tuesday, October 23: Friends Don’t Let Friends Do Drugs.  Students will participate in Mix It Up Day at lunch.

Wednesday, October 24: Hugs not Drugs.  Students will bring in their favorite stuffed animal or picture of someone they love.

Thursday, October 25: Character Is Our Super Power.  Students will wear red, and  carry their Super Power masks, and participate in a school wide march, “Footsteps Worth Following” to show their power over drugs!

Character Trait Poster Contest: Each classroom will participate in a poster contest in which they will decorate and design a poster for their assigned character trait.  These will be used in the march on Friday!

Our assembly went so well! The Peacemaker students spoke at the assembly and held up posters to promote the activities for each day.  They worked very hard to practice their speech.  

Each class was assigned a character trait.  At the assembly, a student, or group had to state what the character trait meant in their own words.  There were some creative demonstrations.

We finished with the song "Who I am" by Will.i.am for all the grades.  I was a little nervous about playing it for the 5th and 6th, but they were so into it.  I think it helped that I played a version that didn't show Sesame street.  I was so happy to see all of the students dancing and singing at the end of the assembly.

After the song, each student signed a pledge created by the art teacher, titled "Footsteps Worth Following"

Each class participated in a poster contest, being assigned a different character trait to display.

Every student made a super hero mask with their choice of a character trait in art class.  They looked awesome as the students wore them during our march.

On Thursday, we had a school wide march around the school, called Footsteps Worth Following.  Huge success! The peacemakers shouted chants such as "boo to drugs" and "it's up to me to be drug free"

To ensure that parents were aware, I sent home a letter, and an activity for them to write a character trait that describes their child, another idea from Barbara at corner on character . If you are interested in viewing this, please contact me.  I have posted pictures of the home activity at the bottom of the post.

 Chracter is My Anti Drug

Dear Parent/Guardian,

We’re celebrating National Character Counts Week and Red Ribbon Week from October 22-25, with the theme: Character Is My Anti-Drug.  What we’d like from you is a drawing or paragraph in the template below showing us your child’s super power.  To assist in this activity, ask yourself some of the following questions: What character trait do you consider your child’s super power? What is he or she passionate about? What is he or she really good at?  We would like to see these back on October 22.  Here is a list of character traits that you may find useful:

Respect

Responsibility

Integrity

Courage

Kindness

Self Discipline

Good Judgement

Below is the list of National Character Counts and Red Ribbon Week Events:

Monday, October 22: Character is our Anti-Drug Assembly and Crazy Sock Day. Students can wear their favorite pair of socks!

Tuesday, October 23: Friends Don’t Let Friends Do Drugs.  Mix It Up Day at lunch.

Wednesday, October 24: Hugs not Drugs.  Students will bring in their favorite stuffed animal or picture of someone they love.

Thursday, October 25: Character Is Our Super Power.  Students will wear red, and their Super Power mask to participate in a school wide march, “Footsteps Worth Following.”

In order to make sure that things went smoothly, I made sure to have EVERYTHING planned out.  I emailed the staff each day to remind of the next days activity.  For the march, each staff member was assigned a post to ensure the safety of students.  Here are some pictures below.  I will be posting about Mix It Up Day, as it was the most successful after two years of trial and error!