Category: Responsibility

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[New Blog] Teaching Justice and Fairness

Living In Today’s World Is Challenging

Young people today are growing up in an increasingly complex world. At times it can seem dangerous and confusing, especially with the incidence of hate crimes up for the third year in a row (as reported by the FBI). Helping your students to feel, and stay, safe yet empowered to confront hate, injustice and inequality is an important outcome of Social Emotional Learning. Knowing how to adequately address these polarizing issues is often a challenge for educators.

Here’s a Strategy That Works!

Grades 2-12

The Sharing Circle provides a simple process and emotionally safe environment that builds a student community that helps build trust and fosters meaningful conversation. The topics discussed in the Sharing Circle provides students the opportunity to discuss and reflect on their own identity and to develop self-awareness and understanding of others.

Here’s a wonderful Sharing Circle from Lessons In Tolerance And Diversity our complete guide to everything you need to know to have success with Sharing Circle Topics

  Here’s Your Sharing Circle. Enjoy!

Do you want more information?

• Leading a Sharing Circle
• Sharing Circle Rules
• Books and Resources
• Free Activities
• Subscribe

Go here:

www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

Here’s How It’s Done

Gather everyone into a circle. Explain the rules for sharing, and get agreement from everyone that they will follow the rules.

Sharing Circle Rules:

  • Everyone gets a turn to share, including the leader.
  • You can skip your turn if you wish.
  • Listen to the person who is sharing.
  • There are no interruptions, probing, put-downs, or gossip.
  • Share the time equally.

After everyone has shared, who wants to share, ask the discussion questions.

You can check the book out HERE.

Just click HERE to open a fully reproducible PDF of this activity and experience sheet…

If you like our blog resources and would like to receive them regularly, please subscribe here or on our website at www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

If you are already a subscriber, I hope you find this activity valuable. Help us grow our blog by sharing these activities and encouraging others to join. Thank you.

Thanks so much for reading!

Susanna

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NEW BLOG – More on Cooperation

Having looked at cooperation and support as qualities of friendship in our last blog, let’s take a deeper look at cooperation and its impact on kids learning to work together.

Grades K-8

In A Perfect World

Ideally, cooperation is characterized by interdependence and inclusion. Everyone is valued for his or her uniqueness. They trust one another, turn to each other for help and advice and, when they experience conflict, utilize positive methods to resolve it. This Sharing Circle promotes cooperation and team building, children acquire many of the insights and skills necessary to interact effectively with their peers, to handle conflict, and to participate productively in collaborative projects and school assignments.

Your Sharing Circle

This Sharing Circle comes from Teaching The Skills of Conflict Resolution, our resource guide of activities and strategies for kids in grades K-8. The topic is, We Cooperated to Get It Done.

  Here’s Your Monday Morning Sharing Circle. Enjoy!

Do you want more information?

• Leading a Sharing Circle
• Sharing Circle Rules
• Books and Resources
• Free Activities
• Subscribe

Go here:

www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

Here’s How It’s Done

Gather everyone into a circle. Explain the rules for sharing, and get agreement from everyone that they will follow the rules.

Sharing Circle Rules:

  • Everyone gets a turn to share, including the leader.
  • You can skip your turn if you wish.
  • Listen to the person who is sharing.
  • There are no interruptions, probing, put-downs, or gossip.
  • Share the time equally.

After everyone has shared, who wants to share, ask the discussion questions.

You can check the book out HERE.

Just click HERE to open a fully reproducible PDF of this activity and experience sheet…

If you like our blog resources and would like to receive them regularly, please subscribe here or on our website at www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

If you are already a subscriber, I hope you find this activity valuable. Help us grow our blog by sharing these activities and encouraging others to join. Thank you.

Thanks so much for reading!

Susanna


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How I Show Respect Toward Others

Reflections on Respect Here’s a follow up on last week’s Blog which discussed the importance of teaching students the value of respect.  Helping students understand the significance of a respectful attitude and helping them identify specific actions and behaviors that demonstrate respect is the purpose of today’s Sharing Circle. This Sharing Circle topic comes from the activity book (Grades 3-6), Hearts and Minds – An After-School Program for Developing Reading Literacy and Emotional Intelligence. The topic is, How I Show Respect Toward Others…

  Here’s Your Monday Morning Sharing Circle. Enjoy!

Do you want more information? • Leading a Sharing Circle • Sharing Circle Rules • Books and Resources   • Free Activities   • Subscribe

www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

Here’s How It’s Done

Gather everyone into a circle. Explain the rules for sharing, and get agreement from everyone that they will follow the rules.

Sharing Circle Rules:

  • Everyone gets a turn to share, including the leader.
  • You can skip your turn if you wish.
  • Listen to the person who is sharing.
  • There are no interruptions, probing, put-downs, or gossip.
  • Share the time equally.

After everyone has shared, who wants to share, ask the discussion questions. Get more in-depth information here.

Just click HERE to open a fully reproducible PDF of this Sharing Circle activity…

If you like our blog resources and would like to receive them regularly, please subscribe above or on our website at www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

If you are already a subscriber, I hope you find this activity valuable. Help us grow our blog by sharing these activities and encouraging others to join.

Thank you. Thanks so much for reading!

Susanna


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Activities for Teaching Respect

Teaching children about respect and developing positive relationships is one of the most important things we can do, especially in today’s increasingly disrespectful world.

What It Takes

Elementary

Being intentional and specifically having your students engage in activities focussed on respect will help them to understand the importance of their respectful actions and to understanding the difference between respectful and disrespectful actions and words.

Respect means showing regard for the worth of someone or something.  It includes respect for self (self-esteem), respect for others, and respect for the environment, including other life forms.  All other varieties of respect are outgrowths of these three.  Respecting someone’s property, for example, extends from respecting the owner of the property.

When we teach students to show respect, we prevent them from hurting what they ought to value.  If we are completely successful, they will end up valuing that for which they have demonstrated respect.    

Other ways to foster respect include:

  • Create a democratic classroom environment, in which the rights of all students are respected.  Show your own regard for every student, every day.
  • Expect students to be polite and courteous.  Consistently model the use of “please,” “thank you,” “excuse me,” etc.
  • Really listen to the opinions and contributions of students.  Make it a rule that students listen respectfully to each other.  
  • Show your appreciation for diversity.  Create an environment in which individual differences are celebrated, and where all students feel included and interdependent.
  • Teach students a simple decision-making process and encourage them to use it.  Respect their ability to make decisions for themselves.  Serve as their advisor and consultant.
  • When students have difficulty understanding how their behavior affects others, suggest that they apply the classic test of reversibility.  Ask them:  Would you want to receive this kind of treatment?

Here’s a great activity for working on one important aspect of RESPECT:

 

You can check the book out HERE.

If you like our blog resources and would like to receive them regularly, please subscribe here or on our website at www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

If you are already a subscriber, I hope you find this activity valuable. Help us grow our blog by sharing these activities and encouraging others to join. Thank you.

Thanks so much for reading!

Susanna

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A Lifetime Skill – Handling Peer Pressure

Grades 7-12

In virtually every area of living life skills are needed. Along with math, science, technology, history and English, students also need to be taught how to manage themselves, their time and activities.  They need to know how to get along with others and to formulate goals and communicate their needs in a pro-social manner.  Too often these critical life skills are not addressed in a direct fashion but their acquisition is simply left to chance.  Students often don’t learn effective ways to deal with life issues.  They have ideas but can’t express them clearly.  They get into conflicts they don’t know how to resolve.  They have hopes and dreams but can only drift through life. 

The Current Reality

Often it’s the lack of skills and awarenesses that prevent many from becoming fully capable, contributing, happy members of society.  School is the ideal places to directly teach life skills, both for their impact on the future and because life skills ensure the effective application of academic skills today.

Here’s a Resource and How to Use It

Understanding Me develops, maintains, and enhances critical life skills.  Among the life skills addressed in these activity sheets are:

• decision making
• goal setting
• communication
• conflict management
• learning
• leadership
• time management
• responsibility
• assertiveness
• career choic
• trust
• friendship
• culture
• justice 

In addition to your own enabling behaviors and the cultivation of an affirming classroom or counseling environment, you can assure a positive impact on the social-emotional development of your students by infusing these activities into your regular curriculum or counseling efforts.  They represent one of many possible approaches and can be enlisted as supplements to other strategies you are currently using. 

A Complimentary Activity

UNDERSTANDING ME is packed with meaningful information for teens to learn new ideas, attitudes, behaviors, perspectives, and skills while promoting self-awareness and self-esteem.  These flexible worksheets can be used by anyone working with teens – teachers, counselors, youth group and after-school leaders, home-schoolers, and parents.

Today’s selected student activity is entitled Pressure!. What is Peer Pressure and what do you do with it?

Use this activity now, and purchase the book to have a whole library of instantly usable social skills skills activities with which to engage your students.

You can check the book out HERE, and you can open a reproducible PDF of your student activity HERE.

If you like our blog resources and would like to receive them regularly, please subscribe here or on our website at www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

Thanks so much for reading!

Dianne Schilling & Gerry Dunne (Authors)

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How Feelings Factor Into Conflict

Grades K-8

This Sharing Circle topic comes from the grades K-8  resource book, TEACHING THE SKILLS OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION. 

Children who have learned to understand, accept, and control their feelings are not only less vulnerable to conflict, they are better equipped to deal constructively with conflict when it occurs. This Sharing Circle will allow students to better understand the connection between feelings and behavior. The topic for this Sharing Circle is, Something I Do That Makes Me Happy…

  Here’s Your Monday Morning Sharing Circle.
Enjoy!

 

Something I Do That Makes Me Happy

Objectives:

The students will:
— identify something that they enjoy doing.
— state that all people can make themselves feel better.

Introduce the Topic:

Today we are going to think about things that we do to make ourselves feel good.  The topic is, “Something I Do That Makes Me Happy.”

Do you know that you can make yourself feel happy?  We all do things every day to help ourselves feel good.  We give hugs to people we love, and that feels good.  We sometimes sing or dance or tell jokes to make ourselves happy.  We might make ourselves happy by playing a favorite game or reading a good book; by getting together with a close friend, playing with a pet, relaxing in front of T.V., or taking a walk.  Close your eyes right now and think of one thing that you do to make yourself happy.  Maybe you eat a favorite snack in the afternoon, or cuddle up with your cat.  Perhaps you paint, or work on your computer.  Take a few moments to think about it.  The topic is, “Something I Do That Makes Me Happy.”

Discussion Questions:

1. Why is it important to know how to make yourself feel better?
2. What ideas did you hear that you’d like to try?
3. Who is in control of how you feel?  Explain.

 

Do you want more information?
• Leading a Sharing Circle • Sharing Circle Rules
• Books and Resources   • Free Activities   • Subscribe

www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

Here’s How It’s Done

Gather everyone into a circle.

Explain the rules for sharing, and get agreement from everyone that they will follow the rules.

Sharing Circle Rules:

•  Everyone gets a turn to share, including the leader.
•  You can skip your turn if you wish.
•  Listen to the person who is sharing.
•  There are no interruptions, probing, put-downs, or gossip.
•  Share the time equally.

After everyone has shared, who wants to share, ask the discussion questions.

Get more in-depth information here.

Just click HERE to open a fully reproducible PDF of this Sharing Circle activity…

If you like our blog resources and would like to receive them regularly, please subscribe here or on our website at www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

Thanks so much for reading!

Susanna

PS: If a friend forwarded this to you, you can just sign up to get your own weekly Innerchoice Counselor Activity Blog.

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Helping Children Deal Constructively with Anger and Conflict

Anger Control, Conflict Management lessons and activities
Elementary (Grades3-6)

Everyone gets angry, and everyone gets involved in conflict.  Both are normal human experiences and often one leads to the other.  Anger can lead to conflict, and conflict can lead to anger.  They generally go together and it’s hard to tell which came first anger or conflict.  Indeed, it’s often difficult to tell them apart.  It’s only natural then that the teaching of the skills and awarenesses that lead to the ability to effectively managing these powerful emotional events be taught together.   Children need to learn effective ways to control, express, and release their anger and strategies for dealing with the conflicts that inevitably arise in life.

The Reality

Because so many influences in their lives teach otherwise, powerful approaches and consistent intervention are needed to teach children positive, social and emotional skills.  Practice makes perfect.  Repeated exposure to positive alternatives, consistent reinforcement, and practice.  Lots of practice!

A Complimentary Activity

Learning together in a classroom or counseling session makes it easier to internalize the skills, strategies, and methods of anger control and conflict management.  We all are social beings designed by our long evolutionary history to learn our interactive behaviors with others.  The activities in ANGER CONTROL AND CONFLICT MANAGEMENT FOR KIDS are designed to actively engage the students with each other in applying knowledge, solving problems, communicating, cooperating, and relating experiences to their own lives.  They demonstrate to students the power of approaching anger and conflict with a win-win attitude, and to teach them a number of basic pro-social strategies for managing anger and resolving conflict.  The experiential group activities included in this book examine the nature of anger and conflict as well as their causes, effects, and resolutions.  A unique Sharing Circle and role-play process builds into the learning experience repeated opportunities for behavioral rehearsal.

Today’s selected group activity is Learning to Control My Anger.

 

Use this activity now, and purchase the book to have a whole library of instantly usable social skills skills activities with which to engage your students.

You can check the book out HERE, and you can open a reproducible PDF of your student activity HERE.

If you like our blog resources and would like to receive them regularly, please subscribe here or on our website at www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

Thanks so much for reading!

Terri Akin & Susanna Palomares (Author)

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Creating Character Education One Activity At A Time With Sharing Circles

Grades 3-8

This Sharing Circle topic comes from the grades 3-8  resource book, Guided Discussions for DEVELOPING CHARACTER. Your students will build an understanding of character and its impact on them and the world around them. The topic helps your students identify the specific behaviors that comprise proactive, responsible citizenship.  The topic for this Sharing Circle is, How I Show That I’m a Good School Citizen…

  Here’s Your Monday Morning Sharing Circle.
Enjoy!

 

How I Show That I’m a Good School Citizen

Purpose:

To identify and discuss specific behaviors that comprise proactive, responsible citizenship.

Introducing the Topic:

In your own words, say to the students: We have two major jobs to do at school.  One is to be a good student — to study and learn.  The other is to be a contributing member of the school community — a good citizen.  In this session, we’re going to focus on the job of citizenship.  Our topic is, “How I Show That I’m a Good School Citizen.”  

Tell us one way in which you demonstrate that you are a good citizen here at school.  Think about the things you do in class and on the playground that help the school community function well.  Maybe you make a habit of always following the rules.  Perhaps you volunteer for jobs in the classroom, like erasing the board, putting away materials and equipment, or tutoring other kids.  Or maybe you participate in a school-wide volunteer group, such as the safety patrol, or the conflict mediation team.  Do you always put your trash in a trash receptacle?  Do you take home notices and bring back permission slips on time?  Do you take part in special events, like assemblies, holiday celebrations, and open house?  Think about it for a few moments.  Being a good citizen involves many different kinds of attitudes and actions.  Our topic is, “How I Show That I’m a Good School Citizen.” 

Discussion Questions:

— Why is it important to be a good school citizen?
— How is being a good citizen of the school similar to being a good citizen of the community?  How is it different?
— Is part of being a good citizen encouraging others to be good citizens?  What are some examples?

Do you want more information?
• Leading a Sharing Circle • Sharing Circle Rules
• Books and Resources   • Free Activities   • Subscribe

www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

Here’s How It’s Done

Gather everyone into a circle.

Explain the rules for sharing, and get agreement from everyone that they will follow the rules.

Sharing Circle Rules:

•  Everyone gets a turn to share, including the leader.
•  You can skip your turn if you wish.
•  Listen to the person who is sharing.
•  There are no interruptions, probing, put-downs, or gossip.
•  Share the time equally.

After everyone has shared, who wants to share, ask the discussion questions.

Get more in-depth information here.

Just click HERE to open a fully reproducible PDF of this Sharing Circle activity…

If you like our blog resources and would like to receive them regularly, please subscribe here or on our website at www.InnerchoicePublishing.com

Thanks so much for reading!

Susanna

PS: If a friend forwarded this to you, you can just sign up to get your own weekly Innerchoice Counselor Activity Blog.