First grade students wrapped up their developmental guidance unit by talking about how we can let our bug feelings out safely. We started by thinking about how bug feelings might make our bodies feel bad. Students told me that sometimes they can have headaches, tummy aches, and a speedy heart, all because of their emotions! We decided it was important to let those bug feelings out so our bodies stay healthy. To practice, we cut out and built some calm down sandwiches. These special sandwiches have layers of skills that help us remember how to feel better, which included taking a break, deep breathing, thinking of something happy, squeezing lemons, and talking about it. After practicing our calm down skills, students used a choice wheel on the Smart Board to practice some conflict resolution strategies. With that, our bug unit in first grade is complete! I look forward to seeing everyone again after our holiday break!
Fourth grade students are up for developmental guidance lessons! Our oldest students are learning conflict resolution skills to help them become independent problem solvers. During their first lesson, students learned to use an "I message" to communicate to someone how they feel. An I message includes 4 parts -
Here are some great I messages 4th graders came up with:
Over the next few weeks, we will explore the different roles in conflicts between friends, and learn to apply our I messages to help solve problems! More to come soon... Third graders wrapped up their first developmental guidance unit by working in teams to either make superhero or villain choices, and see how these decisions affected their ability to be responsible students. Using their knowledge of favorite characters, students agreed that superheroes solve problems, work towards good, and help their communities. Villains, on the other hand, create problems, make unsafe choices, and hurt their communities. We talked about how a change in our emotion zone, like feeling frustrated with a new topic in math, can be a problem for us as learners. Hero teams worked together to use coping skills to be in charge of their emotion zones and make decisions they felt proud of. Villain teams worked together to make choices that showed they were not in control of their emotions, and often created problems for the people around them. We reflected on how making villain choices can eventually affect us in other areas - losing privileges, causing friends to feel frustrated, and even making a trip to see the principal! Everyone did a great job thinking about why we need to be aware of our emotions, and use our skills to be in charge of them so we can be great learners and friends. I will be back to visit our third graders again in the second half of the year, after our holiday break! Seems like a ways away, but time will fly! Until then, I will continue to work with third grade students during lunch bunch and through other group support when needed.
Our 1st grade developmental guidance unit is all about bugs - bug feelings that is! Students can categorize feelings in two ways - nice feelings and bug feelings. In first grade, sometimes we know that we do not have a good feeling, but it is hard to label it, especially when we have more than one feeling at once! Saying we have bug feelings helps express negative emotions without feelings pressured to give a specific feeling word. After students learned what bug feelings and nice feelings are, we read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day to talk about why we might get bug feelings. Students came up with 3 things that bug them. Some great examples included: when I don't get to go first, when I don't get a prize, when someone says I can't play, and when someone doesn't listen to me. Looking ahead, we will be talking about how let out bug feelings safely so they don't hurt us, and ways we can solve some common conflicts.
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