We started this week's lesson by doing a "mixed-up" round of My Turn, Your Turn. For this round, students still had to wait for their turn before repeating the body motions I instructed, but this time I added some "mixed-up" rules to make it harder. For instance, if I said "touch your elbows," in mixed-up rules that meant to touch your ears. I added more mixed-up rules for each class depending on their level of difficulty with the new rules.
Puppy came to visit the class and showed them how he uses self-talk to follow the Listening Rules. Because he has had trouble remembering all of the rules, he has been repeating the rules to himself. By repeating, Puppy is able to remember what to do to be a great listener!
We spent the rest of our lesson talking about a photo of two students: Will and Lamar. The students in the class were working on a writing assignment (much like our first graders do!), but the two students behind Will and Lamar were finished working. They were reading a book aloud, and they were whispering and giggling. Will was able to continue working on his assignment, but Lamar was distracted.
We talked about what it meant to be distracted. We decided that a distraction is something or someone that takes away our attention from what we should be doing. We talked about how the two students behind Will and Lamar were a distraction. We talked about how we could tell Lamar was distracted: he was turning around looking at the students, and he wasn't working on his assignment. We talked about what Lamar could do to help himself ignore the distraction. We decided he could use his attent-o-scope to focus, and tell himself to ignore the girls.
Lamar used self-talk to ignore the girls behind him and also used it to repeat his directions so he could stay focused. By using his attent-o-scope and self-talk, he was able to keep doing his work and get the assignment done. We concluded our lesson by using self-talk to practice repeating directions to themselves during a round of My Turn, Your Turn.
