If You Have Nothing Nice to Say, Say Nothing At All

This is one of the things that I continually tried to teach my students. They were so negative to everything and anything so we constantly said this in my classroom. They were allowed to tell me that also (in a nice tone of voice). Of course I explained I was exempt if I was scolding them about something! It only applied if we were talking about others. In the same way, I had to teach them how to accept compliments, which for a lot of people is a hard thing to do. After a month had passed I wrote each student’s name at the top of a piece of construction paper. Then we brainstormed positive adjectives and wrote them on the board. Everyone was given a paper and had to write, with a crayon or magic marker, one positive thing about that person whose name was at the top. Then after 2 minutes, the paper was passed to the next one. People even had to write something positive about themselves. After this was done, I laminated them and posted them around the classroom. At the end of the nine weeks, each student was given their paper to take home. I still have students who have their paper years later.