Have you Filled a Bucket Today?

Have you Filled a Bucket Today? Amazon.com

Last year was my second year teaching and I realized after my difficult first year I needed a clear plan for classroom management. Besides sitting down and coming up with my routines and procedures for everything, I also knew I needed a way to make my classroom positive. I found I was able to do that by using the idea of Bucketfilling. I began by reading my class Have You Filled a Bucket Today? by Carol McCloud. We talked about how we fill buckets by being kind and dip buckets by bullying or being mean.



There's many places to find buckets. I thought about the silver ones because they were pretty cheap.

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Teal bucket!

New Chalkboard bucket! How cute!

When I saw the teal ones at Target I knew I had to get them.  I went to about four stores to get the blue and white I wanted! I've seen them at the dollar spot once again this year! They still have the blue but they also have black, purple and a couple other colors I can't remember. They also have the chalk board buckets. I think this would be a great way to label the buckets. I ended up using a card tied on with ribbon last year.

My students fill each other's buckets by filling out a form. I was inspired by Beth Newingham's forms. You may download my forms for free:

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They put these forms in the other students buckets that were hanging from the wall. On Friday, we would read our notes and trade our note for two pom poms. One pom pom went in our bucket, the other went to the person that wrote the note.

This went along with the book in that you fill your bucket when you fill others people's buckets. My class adored this time and would always remind me when it was bucketfilling time. When the students collected 20 poms they got a bead for their bucketfilling necklace. I tied these on to their bucket.  I am definitely changing this for next year to only collect 10 poms for a bead. 

That's how I did bucketfilling in my classroom. I was amazed by the kindness that they showed towards each other naturally by the time the year was through. It also helped to have a common understanding of what good behavior looked like. I was able to simply ask the student if they were being a bucketfiller or bucket dipper. With their response, they were thinking about their behaviors and its impact on their classmates.