Last year, I taught grade 4/5 in a small school. Over 1/4 of all the students in the school were in my class (30 out of 110)! Because we were a small school, there was only one class per grade, so for most of my students, they had been with the same friends in the same classes since Kindergarten. By the time they came to me, they were a little sick of each other. I had a lot of fighting within friend groups in the class, several meetings with parents, desk switches almost every week, and regular visits with the counselor. When those strategies didn't work, I decided to try something new. I wanted my students to come up with kind things to say about one another. We started playing team building games in gym and I was trying to recognize when students did nice things for each other. I also wanted each student to know how special they were to the class. I gave every student a copy of the class list and asked them to write down one nice thing ab...