Donors Choose:
Using puppets to improve social interactions

February 14, 2010

Ms. Robinson tells her 30 kindergartners that before anybody in our classroom can learn, it needs to be a safe, happy place. However, in our charter school's high-need, inner-city area, many kindergartners have not had preschool or other experiences interacting with children their age. This can sometimes make it difficult to build a caring classroom community.

With little experience being among peers, many of her kindergartners come to school lacking the social skills needed to interact positively with their classmates. They simply have never encountered situations as simple as being bumped into while in line or being called a mean name. Yet for learning to occur, she needed to make her classroom a comfortable place where students can address problems in appropriate and productive ways.

While she employs a variety of techniques to teach her kindergartners how to react to adverse situations, puppets are also an excellent way of modeling appropriate interactions. In addition, the students themselves can use puppets to safely act out classroom conflicts and appropriate ways of resolving those conflicts. But to make this a part of her classroom's character education, Ms. Robinson turned to Donors Choose to obtain the necessary puppets, a puppet theater, and a stand to house the puppets.

With the help of numerous donors, her kindergartners can now begin using puppets to explore and improve their repertoire of social interactions. This has created a more positive classroom atmosphere enabling her students to work collaboratively and feel safe taking learning risks that stretch and improve their achievement. And the social skills her students are learning through puppets can propel them forward throughout their lives.


View more success stories.