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Objective: Students will be able to use their body language to communicate clearly.
Estimated Duration: 20 minutes
Description: Body language is a way that people communicate with each other without using words. Your body language sends messages to others about how you are feeling or what you are thinking. Teaching students to be aware of their own body language as well as how to read others' can help them communicate more effectively.
This activity will help students think about their own body language. They will name emotions and the body language they use to communicate what they are feeling.
Teachable Moments: There are many ways you can help students understand the messages their body language sends:
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Objective: Students will be able to understand what it means to be a good friend.
Estimated Duration: 20 minutes
Description: Friendships have an enormous impact on students' mental health and happiness.
Teaching children what it means to be a good friend will help them to develop positive relationships with their peers. Not only do students need to know the qualities of a good friend, but they also need to know that friendships take work. They must give to get.
This activity will help students recognize what qualities they look for in a friend as well as ask them to practice being a good friend to others.
Teachable Moments: There are many ways you can help students to develop positive relationships with their peers:
Help students feel confident and have a positive self-esteem. Highlight their best attributes regularly (e.g., honesty, compassion, thoughtfulness, etc.) to set them up to be a good friend to others.
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Objective: Students will be able to identify ways to calm down to help resolve conflicts constructively.
Estimated Duration: 20 minutes
Description: Conflicts can cause stress, anger, feelings of resentment, and they can make it difficult to focus. Skills for conflict resolution are crucial throughout life. It’s important to teach students how to appropriately manage conflicts and the feelings that come along with them.
Conflicts can be difficult to navigate because they bring out intense emotions that students may not be able to process. Before they can address the problem that caused the conflict—whether it was a fight over a toy or betrayal by friend— students need to be able to calm down and get to a place emotionally where they can think before they act.
This activity will help students think of ways they can calm down when their emotions start to bubble up. They will draw or write strategies that they can use to calm down and help them think clearly, so they can resolve conflicts.
Teachable Moments: There are many ways you can help students to calm down when their emotions bubble up:
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Objective: Students will be able to recognize and communicate leadership skills in themselves and others.
Estimated Duration: 20 minutes
Description: It is important for students to learn and build on their leadership skills to open new possibilities and help make better decisions.
Leadership is a multi-faceted skill that helps students learn to communicate, empathize with others, solve problems, and work in teams. Good and effective leadership is a skill that can be learned, practiced, and improved on.
Most think of the loud and confident personalities as the obvious leaders. But even the quiet, shy kid in class can be a leader. In fact, it is likely that at some point in their life, everyone will be called upon to lead in some way or another. For this reason, it is crucial that we help students learn how to prepare for leadership roles.
This activity helps students think about what makes a good leader. They are asked to write about ways that they think leaders should act, things they should say, and things they should think.
Teachable Moments: To help students build their leadership skills:
Estimated Duration: 25-30 minutes
NOTE: After it is glued into the student book, the display should fold in and fold flat so the book can be closed. When the book is open to this page, the display can be opened and folded into a standing diorama.
Go to other SEL competencies in this book (Primary - Grades 1–2):
The teaching suggestions only work in accompaniment with the student portfolio, which has all the activity pages.
The teaching suggestions here are also available within a PDF of the entire teacher's manual.