Warden Park School, West Sussex


The Warden Park kindness initiative has taken many forms and been recognised in many ways. In October we launched the initiative with an assembly to show students the benefits of kindness and how they could acknowledge the kind acts of others. Since then, students have logged over 300 acts of kindness from their peers using our electronic questionnaire. The very kindest acts have been acknowledged with certificates and trophies.

Since then, we have incorporated kindness into our tutor programme by focusing on kind acts in the media, learning about people famous for their kind acts and debating different forms of kindness and why they are so important. This was kicked of with an entire week of kindness activities in tutor time.

The initiative has also had an impact in lessons, with a kindness week of lessons where students have learned about kindness within their curriculum area. Examples of this include: Which country is the kindest (Georgraphy), the finances of running a charity (Maths), writing kind poems about other students (English) and being polite in other languages and cultures (Languages). This saw a positive impact in all lessons of our KS3 students.

Since then, we have appointed a kindness council to help with the school’s charity drive and help deliver more new initiatives to Warden Park. We are currently working on drop-in sessions where students can talk to members of the kindness council about anything they wish. If students report any unkind behaviour, then this is reported to the pastoral team.

Aylesford School Sports College, Kent

We have recently been using your kindness resource pack for secondary schools in our PSHEE lessons at Aylesford School Sports College. Our year 8 students have been trialling some of the activities as part of their 'making a positive contribution' unit of work. They particularly enjoyed discussing the conundrums and we developed this by watching the YouTube clip 'inspirational video pay it forwards' and rating the acts of kindness on a continuum. All students in year 8 have watched the 'pay it forwards' movie in lessons, with activities taken from your resource pack to compliment it and feedback from students about this unit has been positive. We have also been looking at some of the themes with other groups where they compliment existing topics, for example year 9 have been looking at criminal behaviour and having seen your activity on graffiti I decided to lead a full lesson on the impact of graffiti on the community- where we provided examples of positive and negative street art and encouraged students to express and debate an opinion about this. We then looked at students creating their own example of a draft of artwork which shows 'kindness' as you suggested in your arts and creativity activities. I would like to look at students spending more time on this in the future so we get some work which can be displayed around school. Finally, we are arranging for the Maidstone Lions charity to visit the school for a week of assemblies based on kindness, volunteering and the community to support our existing charity efforts. We are now looking at how we can begin to add 'kindness' to our key stage 4 lessons. Thank you very much for the resource and the plethora of ideas it has provided us to allow the school to consider this important theme in more depth.

St Columba’s College, Co Down

Thank you for providing us with such a valuable resources, one of the best I have come across in a very long while. A real strength of the pack is the fact that the activities are subject specific and easily accessible. It provided teachers with a one-stop-shop for all their needs. Our pupils and staff responded with real enthusiasm throughout a week packed with events. I have included a schedule of activities to give you some appreciation of how we celebrated ‘kindness’. You will also find enclosed some extracts of events from a few subjects. They convey something of the enjoyment and commitment of everyone to what was a unique week in St Columba’s College. The evidence of kindness permeates our corridors and classrooms and I am very proud of the way in which we have embraced this wonderful theme. Be assured the banner of kindness is flying high in Portaferry.

Here is a selection of kindness work/projects at St Columba’s:

Berwickshire High School, Duns

The first year class of 20 pupils was very excited about the whole concept of providing Afternoon Tea for Senior Citizens. They baked all the goodies the night before at home and brought them in to school for Kindness Day. They are also provided some prizes for the raffle. The Music Department in school provided some entertainment for our guests. We had our National Kindness Day Afternoon Tea for 65 Senior Citizens. The whole afternoon was absolutely fabulous and pupils were fantastic. It was such a success that the pupils wish to do it again. They raised £154 on the Raffle they organised.

Below is a selection of comments from Senior Citizens following the Afternoon Tea:

Westhoughton High School, Lancashire

Thank you so much for your kindness pack - it really gave us a lift! We have had a look on the website too and found some great ideas. We are meeting our student council this morning with the intention of discussing a 'Kindness Week' - this will be held on the last week of term. The intention is for each year group to raise money for their own year charity on one set day with their own activities. The students will also engage in some fundraising with Sainsbury's at our local store with proceeds going to the 'Hand on Heart' charity: in this way each year group will have their own Kindness Day during Kindness Week. With regard to the resources pack, we intend to ask our staff to run one lesson each day, based on the theme of kindness (so any additional packs or other ideas would be welcome). Many thanks for the pack and the website information. Everyone took the idea on board and we received so many positive comments. Our MP Julie Hilling attended the final assembly too so it was lovely for everyone. We will be doing our kind acts again next year I am sure! During Kindness Week our lessons were based on a theme of Kindness - thanks to your materials - and we have had lots going on! We have had wellie walks and wellie wanging for Give Hunger the Boot and we have been raising money with lots of activities like smoothie making etc However, the best bit was the random acts of kindness by our school council Kindness Army when we went into town giving away sweets and flowers and washing cars for free!

The reaction around school has been fabulous and so has our community reaction. We have also raised lots of money for charity but, as a school we have been immensely enriched. I have included some of the highlights below and my ode to kindness for our final assembly alongside our totals raised. Thank you so much for the support of Kindness UK - I can see this will be an annual event!

The staff said...

• I really liked the kindness attacks ( we gave out sweets in classes randomly!)
• The Year 10 Music concert was great
• All round great week which really showed the kindness of all pupils and staff.
• I thought Kindness Week was absolutely brilliant! It has been one of the most enjoyable weeks I have experienced in school!
• It was a pleasure to receive my Kindness postcards from the Kindness army (who are cute beyond words!).
• The lovely messages from students and staff alike really made my day and put a huge smile on my face!
• Thank you for Kindness Week!
• My highlight was the year 8 pupils on Wednesday producing their Victoria sandwich sponges singing the Michael Jackson song "Just beat it" as they were just beating their ingredients, it was magic.
• The sheer enthusiasm of year 7 pupils
• What a fantastic idea of having the kindness postcards - I have really enjoyed the kind comments sent from pupils who have really made my week.

The students said...

• I loved making kindness cards for staff and my friends
• The best part was when my friend brought me some Haribo in!
• My highlight was people complimenting me
• The concert in A1 was fantastic
• I like Kindness lessons
• Miss Patel gave us all chocolate cupcakes!
• The best part of kindness week was no homework!

Our community said...

• You've really made my day
• We should have more of this!
• What a brilliant idea!
• Woman who said – give my sweet to that lady outside – she is lovely and really deserves some kindness. (We did and it made her day)

Other highlights were...

• The man on Westhoughton market who asked why we were giving out sweets and flowers. When we told him about Kindness week, he called everyone back to give them a free book – he wanted to pass on the kindness
• The woman in the sweet shop who did the same

Westhoughton High school raised a grand total of £1357.48 for charity during Kindness week.

Kindness Week Ode
In our last week of term we saw Kindness abound
We knew we were kind – so we spread it around

There's lots we've been doing and good things to share
To show our community we really care

We set off to Sainsbury's to help others pack
We've wanged wellies for hunger out of a huge sack

We've raised money from hampers and smoothies and treats
Had a concert from Year 10 and turned up the heat

It's been a great week and we think you will find
That things are much nicer when the world's being kind!

Boroughmuir High School, Edinburgh

“The Kindness pack looks like a great resource and I have already shared it with a couple of colleagues. We will be incorporating some of the activities within our school curriculum. In RMPS (religious, moral and philosophical studies) we look at what makes an action good or bad and what makes a person unique in our philosophy unit with S2 pupils (13 year olds) and how we can improve the world around us through our actions. There are a number of things in the Kindness UK pack that fit into the different areas for the course. In S3&4, 14-16 year olds, we run the Scottish course on Religion beliefs and values, where the pupils are expected to put their values into action and do work for a charity, whether that be raising funds or raising awareness as part of this course we examine human behaviour and altruism features so the kindness activities will be used as part of this course. We will also encourage some of the groups to run a kindness day activity! There is also a Happiness course for our 6th year pupils and the activities will be used with some of the classes. The activities in the Kindness UK school pack are clearly thought out and link with a huge variety of areas in the school’s curriculum. We will continue to read through the work and I’m sure that it will feature heavily in our curriculum from now on. Thank you so much for sending what we are sure will be a very valuable resource in the future and will become part of our teaching routine for years to come. We look forward to further investigating your website as well as I’m sure that it will also be very useful! We hope to share it with many others as well! The link to the website has been passed onto all the staff in the school. Thanks again for sharing kindness with us all!”