Kindergarten: Self-Talk

Last week we focused on another skill for learning that can help students be successful: using self-talk. Self-talk takes place when students use a quiet voice to talk to themselves inside their heads. After this lesson, students had learned three of the four skills for learning: focus attention, listen, and use self-talk.

We started our lesson with another round of Follow, Follow to warm up our listening skills, but this time students had to repeat the directions before they did the motions. This helped students remember that repeating directions can help them remember what they are supposed to do. Next, we listened to the "Be a Learner" song and students listened for specific words and did the corresponding body movements.

Students did the following motions:

• Focus/Attention - make attentoscope
• Listen - cup ears
• Eyes, Ears, and Brain - point to eyes, ears and brain

Snail visited the class and talked about a problem he was having in class. Snail has been forgetting to write his name on the top of his paper, so he practiced repeating "write my name on the top of the page" to himself several times to help him remember. By repeating, he is more likely to remember and is solving a problem!

For the remainder of the lesson we focused on a photo of two students sitting at their table in the classroom. Paulo was working hard on an assignment, but Samarah was playing with her pencil instead of working. We looked at each student and talked about whether they were focused on their work. We decided that Paulo was focused, but Samarah was distracted. We talked about the different skills for learning that Paulo could be using to be successful: focusing attention and listening. We also talked about a new skill for learning Paulo was using to stay focused: self-talk. Even though Samarah was being distracting by playing with her pencil, Paulo used self-talk to stay focused on his talk and remember his directions.