Character education is highly important for us to teach our students. Lessons such as these help provide ground rules for life which help our students become conscious of their behaviors and the right thing to do. I try to start social emotional learning (SEL) as soon as the very first day. Starting early and making an effort to do these lessons every single day only helps your students begin to practice and reflect these behaviors sooner! These are just a few of my favorite topics I prefer to begin teaching first:
I believe if us teachers got a penny for everytime we were interrupted in a day we would be rich! Kids have so many thoughts and such wonderful ideas, but their communication could definitely use some structure sometimes. Helping them be able to dissect a situation to know when it is best to insert their thoughts and when it is best to wait for their turn can really help them to be able to have self control of their words. It is important to let them know what they want to say is valuable, but what others are already saying is valuable too. Taking turns can be hard, but not impossible. Check out this lesson, here.
Respect is a key character development. Respect isn’t just for elders or authority figures, it is for peers, the environment and yourself. Teaching respect is teaching your students to care for the people around them and the world they live in. This is such a crucial lesson for me. I want my students to grow up with self respect and acknowledgment of others and their surroundings. This lesson helps explain how important respect is and what can happen if no one has it.
Due to our current social distancing status, this may be one of the lessons you will want to make priority. Especially after your students understand respect, because personal space is about respecting the boundaries of others and controlling our bodies. This lesson teaches personal space and also focuses on picking up on body language cues to determine what space another person is comfortable with! Plus, it includes one of my favorite books on this subject!
Our young students are still working hard on the ability to solve their own problems, but sometimes it can be difficult for them to know for sure what should be handled by an adult or what they can deal with on their own. Teaching them the difference between reporting and tattling can be a major change in the classroom flow as your students can learn how to appropriately deal with a situation themselves. They can also learn what situations should always involve an adult as well. This unit can be found here.
This character skill involves students understanding when they were wrong in a situation. It also includes knowing that a real genuine, heartfelt apology can go further than a simple “I’m sorry.” This may seem like a simple skill that should be self taught or even self explanatory, but some kiddos struggle with being able to know when they should apologize or even how to. Including this in your social emotional learning lessons is very important for this reason.
Each SEL unit I listed can really improve your classroom dynamic tremendously, and there are so many more great topics, too. All the resources linked are great on their own, but if you are looking for an entire bundle you can find multiple lessons and resources here!
Each source comes with a book and a 15 minute lesson for 5 days, home connection page for parents and more!
-Jennifer
