Compliment Day: 2010 - 2011

In the 2010 - 2011 school year, Houghton Elementary began celebrating the state-mandated No Name-Calling Day by engaging in a school-wide activity for three weeks. We renamed this day Compliment Day and asked students to write down compliments about their fellow classmates on strips of colored paper that corresponded to the colors of our school values. We then turned these strips into links and connected each compliment to another compliment in order to create a chain. We hung these chains from the ceiling in the hallway, beginning one chain on the third and fourth grade wing and one chain near the kindergarten classrooms. The chains grew longer and longer every day as compliment loops were added to each side. By the end of this activity, the chains came together in the front lobby, uniting the whole school in compliments. This school-wide chain brightened the hallways and were left up until the end of the year as a visual to remind students to treat each other kindly and the importance of compliments. The following picture shows the chain running the length of the Main Street hallway.

We also introduced the visual of the Complimen"tree" in the front lobby of Houghton Elementary School. Our art teacher, Mrs. Greene, created a Complimen“tree” to honor our five Houghton values and to display examples of compliments for children to reference. Each teacher discussed compliments and complimentary language with their students during morning meeting. After this discussion, the children brainstormed examples of compliments about Houghton. Each class voted on one compliment to represent their classroom and wrote this compliment on their leaf. These leaves were then placed on the Complimen“tree” which was situated in the front lobby of our school. The picture below shows this visual, which is still present in the front lobby today.