The Social Teacher

 We are back at it with board games this month but with a little twist.   THE GROUP PLAN: The group plan to for student to understand what is going on in the classroom so they can stay focused and do their best learning.   Do a lot of your students leave the classroom for speech therapy, extra reading support, OT, or even just going to the bathroom? How do they act when they come into the classroom after they are gone?  When your student know the "Group Plan" using their eyes to look around the classroom.  It will also help them learn how to be in a group. Students will learn the expectations for a small group.  Students are going to be in small groups for school many times. I want them to have a good foundation of how to be a good group member.  You will see a pattern this month:  Mondays: Read Aloud Thursdays: STEM projects Fun Friday: Board Games  All of these will learn how to be in groups, regulate emotions, and learn how to be a good group member. At this point in the s

 This week we put it all together.  Zones of Regulation, Size of the Problem, and Role Playing How did I do it?  Day 1: We review the zones of regulation and the posters on the wall of the size of the problems.  Then I asked how does this all go together? I want my students to understand that we go through a ton of emotions throughout the day. My job is to help them see their emotions and help regulate them.  I show them all these ways to regulate them because there might be more than one way to do.   For the remainder of the lesson, we pretend we are in a different zone and act out how to respond to them to get back into the green zone.  Day 2: I will go more into depth about "Mindful Breathing" later in my blogs because we are going to be taking a training on it.  I know very little about it, but what I know now is that it is a time to take a break, focus on your breathing, take deep breaths to get back on track.  Our principal uses it every morning with our students, so I

 Keeping up with the Zones of Regulation theme for the week I found a fun sorting activity on the Teachers Pay Teachers website.  Maine School Counselor has a coloring sorting activity where you color the correct color emotion with the correct zone color.  I was trying to find one with pictures for the students to do it independently but instead I read the emotions out load and the students decided on what color together.   It's hard to see the emotions but all of the emotions go with a zone. 

Have you ever heard of it?  Zones of Regulation is a curriculum used in schools to help student regulate their emotions based on colors.  Each zone has its own color with different emotions. Click on the link for more information.   Here are the zones. You will see the zones of each color and the emotions that go with it.   This is a review for my first graders. They were taught it in kindergarten so this will be a review.  We review the colors, emotions, and how we act in each zone.   It is fun to act out each zone as well. The students will understand it better.  We also discussed what zone we should be in when throughout the day.   *Blue: morning time, *Green: learning time, *Yellow: recess, lunch

 The SNOW is here! Whether we like it or not... the snow is here.  And the snow causes some issues at recess.  This month's theme is RECESS RELATIONSHIPS. This is an ongoing something that comes up a lot.  Recess is an unstructured time and when some students don't have the body and self-control students will struggle.   Day 1: I read the book Recess Queen by Alexis O'neill in the beginning of the year to discuss recess expectations, but I also read it when the snow comes.  The story is about a mean girl at recess and how nobody gets to play with a lot of recess equipment because of her.  A new girl comes to school and becomes friends with the mean girl, and she isn't so mean anymore.   This story does take place outside at recess. The story doesn't have snow in it, so we talk about how it would change the story. We discuss the snow rules and how to keep us all safe with it.  This also is a great segway to our winter science unit.  Day 2: We talk a lot about how we

 Welcome Back!  We are back in full force! We all know this week is all about review... What do you review? We all know we review academics. But we also review what we have learned about Christmas: Empathy Compassion Size of the Problem Self-Control You a special 1. The day we come back all the students are so excited, and you get another "honeymoon" day of all the students listening and getting along.  They are all like sponges again so I read the book: Giraffes Can't Dance by: Giles Andreae  I read this story to remind my students they are back at school with someone that provides them comfort and a loving environment.  We then remind each other reminding them using the daily affirmations we do.   2. We also read: If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by: Laura Numeroff. This is a great example of EMPATHY to show students that when you do something that will always be a reaction to it. We retell the story (use pictures for younger grade). I will retell the story using the book