Fifth Grade: Calming Down

For our last lesson in this rotation, we worked on the final step of the Calming-Down Steps: Calming Down. We watched the rest of the video about Maia, who was experiencing strong feelings after James took her answer and won the funky monkey pencil and free A test grade. In our last lesson we had gone over the first two steps of the Calming-Down Steps.

1. Stop -- Use Your Signal
2. Name Your Feeling

This time, Maia uses the three Calming-Down Steps to help her handle her emotions and calmly work out the situation. Next, we watched the rest of the video about Jayla and Lydia, who were arguing about a bracelet. In this video, Jayla used deep-belly breathing to calm down, while Lydia used counting.

We spent the rest of the lesson practicing three strategies to use during the Calming Down step: breathing, counting, and positive self-talk. I asked students to brainstorm a time when they have experienced strong emotions, and begin to imagine that situation was happening again. This allowed students to re-experience the feeling of strong emotions in their bodies. We talked about what the students were feeling: shallow breathing, hot face, quick heartbeat, sweating, tense muscles. Next, we practiced breathing in deeply, filling our lungs, and making sure our stomach was pushing out with each breath in. During the exhale, we made sure our stomachs were falling back down.

Next, we practiced counting down from 10 silently while looking at the floor. We talked about why counting is so helpful: it buys us time. If we are thinking about counting, we aren't screaming at someone or doing something we regret. With that extra time, we are able to make better decisions. 

Finally, we discussed the examples of positive self-talk we had seen in the video. We talked about what happens when we use negative self-talk (our feelings get even stronger), and how positive self-talk calms us down. We ended the lesson by discussing which calming down strategies would work best for each person.

Third Grade: Accepting Differences

For our final lesson in this rotation, we talked about the importance of accepting differences. We began the lesson with a Brain Builder called "Common Ground," where students would use thumbs up or thumbs down to show their partner how they felt about a certain activity that I asked about. These hand signals allowed students to see if they had the same or different feelings than their partners. I asked students about five different activities, and many of them got a good mix of things they had in common and things they didn't.

We spent the rest of the lesson talking about a picture of two girls: Olivia and Yasaman. Yasaman, an Iranian student, was new to Olivia's school. We talked about what looked different about these students (how they dress, ethnicity, Yasaman wears a hijab). I told the students about others in the class laughing at Yasaman, and how Olivia sometimes does that too. We talked about why they might tease or laugh at Yasaman (they don't understand her culture, they've never met anyone like her). We also talked about how Yasaman feels when students do this: sad, hurt, embarrassed.  We talked about how teasing or laughing at someone because they are different is not respectful.

Next, we brainstormed ways Olivia and Yasaman were alike. Both girls liked to draw, and Olivia was very interested in the special Iranian drawings Yasaman was working on. We brainstormed ways Olivia could get to know Yasaman better, and Olivia ended up asking Yasaman about her drawings. Eventually the girls became good friends. We talked about what Olivia can do the next time someone teases or laughs at Yasaman (tell them its against the rules, tell them to think about how they would feel if it happened to them).

We ended the lesson by having students get back with their partners and think about three things they have in common, two differences, and one thing they would like to know about each other.

First Grade: Feelings Change

For our final lesson this rotation, we are learning about how feelings can change. We started out our lesson with a game of Mrs. Brumitt Says, but this time with "mixed-up" rules. Mixed-up rules consist of me replacing "touch your nose" with "touch your knees," meaning when I say to touch your nose, you touch your knees instead. I added more rules in as students became more comfortable with the first mixed-up rule.

We reviewed where to look for feelings clues, and then Puppy and Snail visited to talk about recess. They both enjoy recess, but they like different activities. We talked about how this was similar to Sally and Louisha, who we watched a video about last week. We recapped how Sally (scared, nervous) and Louisha (happy, excited) were feeling in the video, and talked about how the other students in the video felt.

We watched the second part of the video, where Sally's feelings changed as a result of Louisha being welcome and inviting to her. We identified her new feeling (happy), and we shared times where our feelings had changed about something. We talked about how empathy helps us to change others' feelings and can help them have a better day. We ended out lesson by practicing welcoming and inviting Puppy and Snail with different scenarios.

Fifth Grade: Introducing Emotion Management

Fifth grade started a new unit this week on Emotion Management. Our first lesson focused on what happens in our brains and bodies when we experience strong emotions. The amygdala responds to sensors in the body and reacts, not thinking, to the situation. We can activate the cortex, or thinking part of our brain, by using the Calming Down Steps:

1. Stop -- Use Your Signal
2. Name Your Feeling
3. Calm Down

In this lesson we primarily focused on the first two steps. We watched a video about two students, Lydia and Jayla, who are arguing over a bracelet. The two students begin screaming at each other during recess and ultimately walk away from the issue unresolved. We identified how we thought each student was feeling in the situation and why. We also talked about whether they would be able to solve the issue with these actions (no), and why they wouldn't be able to: not listening to each other, too angry to solve problem, not trying to solve the problem.

Next, we watched the two students use the first two steps in the Calming Down Steps, and we identified what they said for each of these steps. One student used the signal "Okay, hold on" to stop from becoming more frustrated. The other student used the signal "Wait a Minute" and said she was feeling "very angry." We will see how this scenario ends during next week's lesson, when students use the final Calming Down Step.

Third Grade: Kindest Kansas Citian

This week, we are taking a break from our empathy lessons to work on a writing activity called The Kindest Kansas Citian. All third grade students will be completing an essay where they pick one KC resident, who is above the age of 18 and not a relative of the student.

Mr. Heinerikson and I will read all of the essays and select several to submit to the competition.

First Grade: Similarities and Differences

To continue our unit on empathy, this week we are focusing on how people can have the same or different feelings about something. We started out our lesson with another round of Mrs. Brumitt Says, but this times students had to listen for whether I said to do "the same thing" or "something different" from what I am doing. Next, we reviewed where we can look for feelings clues: face, body, our words and how we say them, and the situation. We listened to The Feelings Song and sang along while doing the corresponding movements that go with the song.

We spent the rest of the lesson talking about two girls who were starting their first day at school: Sally and Louisha. We watched a video that showed how they were feeling along with several other students. Next, we talked about what was the same for the two students: both were girls, they go to the same school, it was the first day of school for both of them. Next, we talked about what was different: they had different colored hair, different colored dresses, different colored backpacks, and different feelings about going to school.

We used our feelings clues to tell how each student was feeling. Louisha was feeling happy and excited, but Sally was feeling scared and nervous. We talked about how their feelings were different, and why it is okay to have different feelings. We ended our lesson by doing an activity where pairs of students had to stand back to back and use their faces and bodies to show how they were feeling about a situation. The pair would turn to face the class, and the rest of the students would guess how they are feeling and whether they had the same or different feelings.

Fifth Grade: Disagreeing Respectfully

In this week's lesson, fifth grade learned how to disagree respectfully. We started the lesson with a scenario where students had to write one word that described their thoughts about a task their little sister had chosen for them to do all day. Once all of the thoughts were collected, we shared them as a class. Many of the thoughts were negative, such as boring, dumb, stupid, not fun, etc. We talked about what would happen if we shared those ideas with a little sister. Many students thought they would get in trouble, their sister would be sad, their sister would be angry. When we are disrespectful to others about disagreements, it is harder to come to a solution.

We spent the rest of the lesson discussing two video clips of students disagreeing. The first video showed two students disagreeing in a very disrespectful way. They blamed each other and used absolutes like "always" and "never" to describe what the other student does wrong. We talked about how the students voices sounded (yelling, loud, attitude), and whether the students were listening to each other (no). We decided that these students most likely will not be able to solve their problem. We also talked about how they have essentially made things harder on themselves, because now they will have to seek forgiveness from each other before they will be able to even think about solving the problem.

The final video clip showed students disagreeing respectfully. We noticed that their voices were calm, and the words they used were respectful. We could tell the students were listening to each other because they took the time to process what the other student said, and said things like "I understand." We also noticed that they did not use blaming or absolute language, and they kept their emotions out of it. They were able to come to a solution that was a compromise for both students. The students were able to come to a solution by speaking assertively about how they felt and listening with attention to what the other student was saying.