(please see Inquiry Project for more information on how I incorporated self-regulation in the classroom)
-Because I incorporated social and emotional learning (SEL) in the morning meetings with the class this week I thought we would have a feelings week to get us started. Every morning the students would guess a new emotion and we would do games and read books exploring a variety of emotions. I was curious as to the students prior knowledge on emotions and where their emotion vocabulary was at. I must say I was very impressed by some of the more complex words the students knew (like jealousy). Interestingly enough courage and pride were emotions that I was really glad I touched on because the students were very curious as to what exactly those emotions entailed. I read the book Courage by Bernard Waber and it was fantastic because it gave the students relatable examples of courage for their age -highly recommend it!
Can you guess the feeling? (It starts with a P!)
-In an attempt to infuse SEL into the classroom the students got to make their own stress balls. Every so often I have been writing the word ‘strategy’ on the board and we discuss what a strategy is and how we all have different strategies. I related the word strategy back to our stress balls saying that a stress ball can be a useful strategy for some. The students absolutely loved the activity! I went from desk group to desk group helping them funnel the rice into their balloons while they worked their stress ball worksheet.
How adorable are these stress balls!