Second Grade: Feeling Confident

We are continuing our unit on empathy for our January lessons. We started off our lesson with a review of what empathy means, why it is important, and where we can look for feelings clues: faces, bodies, and the situation. We played a Brain Builder called "Choral Clapping" where students were divided intro groups and had to clap on different counts. I was the counter, and I purposely sped up the speed as we started our activity. The purpose of the activity was to frustrate students and show them the clues that told me that feeling -- what I noticed in their facies, bodies, and the situation (I didn't give them time to practice, I sped up the counting when they didn't feel comfortable with the activity).

For the rest of the lesson, we talked about a student named Estela, who was learning how to tell time. She was working very hard on an assignment about telling time, but it was very difficult for her. We talked about how she was feeling: sad, frustrated, confused, and embarrassed. We also brainstormed different ways she could get better at telling time: ask a friend for help, ask her teacher for help, ask a parent for help, practice at home, and use self-talk. Estela practiced for weeks and learned how to tell time. Now she feels confident! We talked about what it means to feel confident, feeling sure about our ability to do something. We also talked about what being confident doesn't mean -- bragging about how good we are.

We ended our lesson  by talking about what makes us feel confident, and the students shared with  their partners what they feel confident about. By the end of the lesson, students knew what it means to be confident, what it looks like when others feel confident, and what they feel confident about.