There are a million things going on at every school.
WHY CREATE A THEME FOR SCHOOL
How to add structure and direction? Create a theme for the year.
Creating a theme gives a sense of unity and a common purpose for the school. Everyone knows “This is the year of ______.” Kindness? Respect? Growth? Helping? Create a slogan like “At Elm Elementary everyone is a friend!” The theme is friendship. (Let’s assume that’s the theme for this blog.)
HOW TO SUPPORT YOUR SCHOOL THEME
Then support this at every turn. Put up posters and slogans. Ask the teachers to carry this into the classroom or even into their lessons and assignments. If the four
th graders need to write a paper, why not one on friendship? What if the PE teacher incorporated friendship into the games? Perhaps that means two-person friendship teams. Of course, I strongly encourage making this voluntary for teachers. Many teachers have established patterns and routines that would create more stress to change than it’s worth. But for every new project, now you and the students have a starting point.
Support this daily with a quote about the theme during morning announcements. Check out 69 Quotes on Friendship.
Create a Principal’s Challenge that rewards students for certain behavior or actions that line up with the theme.
Create a school-wide art project to support the theme, “The Friendship Poster Challenge.”
ALIGN YOUR SCHOOL THEME WITH OTHER PROGRAMS
Even assemblies can be chosen based on the theme.
If you had four assemblies in a year and each one had some aspect of “Friendship”, these assemblies would seem more purposeful, rather than random. Then each assembly reminds students of the others and you’re now creating cumulative value for your school with the money spent on assemblies. For a theme like this, we would recommend, Kids for Kindness, Bye Bye Bully and It’s OK To Feel That Way.
To add an extra “kick”, pair your theme with your mascot, for example, “Lenny the Lion says Friendship Year is the time to make new friends and support each other.”
Add a musical genre to it, “Friendship Rocks!!!”. Now your theme has specific music to go with it.
Setting a theme for the year helps your school with a sense of community and a common goal.
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