Have You Filled a Bucket Today? 

What a wonderful time of year, the start of school is!  Full of new beginnings, fresh starts and of course the opportunity to make new friends by filling buckets!  At the start of the year I always read one of my absolutely favorite stories, Have You Filled a Bucket Today?  This wonderful story helps kids to learn the importance of small kind acts by teaching kids that everyone has an imaginary bucket that needs to be filled.  Someone can fill a bucket by being kind and thoughtful to another person.  And when kids are kind and thoughtful to others not only do they fill someone else's bucket, their bucket gets full too!  This book also spends some time highlighting the negative impacts of teasing and bullying by calling this action, 'bucket dipping'.  A 'bucket dipper' has an empty bucket and cannot fill their own bucket by dipping into someone else's. 

Here at Wheelock, the students have the opportunity to share their examples of being 'bucket fillers' by filling out a slip and putting them into the 'Wheelock Bucket' (see above picture), so that their example can be shared on the bulletin board.  This lovely bulletin board is displayed on the first floor near the middle set of stairs.  Here are a couple great examples of students being 'bucket fillers' at Wheelock:

"Give a compliment to a friend"

"I shared a game by compromising" 

 Thank you so much for visiting my blog and I hope that your buckets get filled :)

Spring has Sprung :)

Ahhhhh, spring is here!  The warm weather has finally arrived and the students are so happy to be playing outside without all that snow equipment!  With the warm weather comes an increase of free space and playing new games (which is awesome-of course).  However, we usually see a bit of an increase in some social conflicts.  Through this post, I hope to provide some communication about the language we use here at Wheelock and also some tools you can use at home to support social problem solving.

Here at Wheelock we use both Open Circle and the Social Thinking curriculums to help teach our students how to navigate social conflicts and promote their emotional development.   There are different types of social problems and all the classes use a 1-5 point scale (tiny-huge) in conjunction with terms like ‘double d’ (destructive and dangerous) behaviors, to help educate students. 

We encourage our students to solve 1-3 point problems on their own using expected language (ex. teasing and/or 1x conflict) by using a calm & firm voice to stick up for yourself.  However, we put great importance on the fact that they should always tell a trusted adult right away if the issue is a ‘double d’ (destructive or dangerous-4 point problem) and/or the situation does not get resolved when they tried to use their words.   One way to stick up for yourself is by using “I statements”, for example- “I felt upset because the rules were not followed, next time I hope we can figure out the rules before we start the game”.   Here is a great visual to support this:

There are a lot of great books to support bullying that you could read with kids at home, here are some of my recommendations:

My Secret Bully by Trudy Ludwig:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1582461597/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1582461597&linkCode=as2&tag=lubraexpos-20

Just Kidding by Trudy Ludwig

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Kidding-Trudy-Ludwig/dp/1582461635/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429108158&sr=8-1&keywords=just+kidding

Confessions of a former bully by Trudy Ludwig:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307931137/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0307931137&linkCode=as2&tag=lubraexpos-20

Speak up and Get Along:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1575421828/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1575421828&linkCode=as2&tag=lubraexpos-20

Tease Monster by Julia Cook

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1934490474/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1934490474&linkCode=as2&tag=lubraexpos-20

Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog, I hope these resources are helpful! 

Interruption Strategies

My Mouth is A Volcano 

This week I had the pleasure of teaching one of my favorite social skills lessons to a lovely second grade class.  This story by Julia Cook uses kid friendly imagery with great perspective taking skills to teach kids why it's important not to interrupt.  The main character Louis thinks his words are so important they cannot wait ;but when it was his turn to be the star student, he did not like being interrupted (or erupted as the book would say).  Turns out other student's have volcanoes too!  We had some nice discussions about how it can make other people feel when they are interrupted. 

The book teaches a great way to take a deep breath in and we brainstormed some extra ideas too!

A few Interruption Strategies:

1. Raising your hand and wanting to be called on. 

2. Take a deep breath in, breathe the words out of your nose and imagine they are hanging out until it is your turns.  When it's your turn breathe in and imagine the words coming back to you!

3. Pushing your lips together and counting your teeth with your tongue. 

4. Using our "Inner Coaches"- to tell ourselves positive statements to help us like:  "it's okay to wait" and "You will get your turn soon"

5. Using a fidget or stress ball

We even had some real life practice when I asked them to tell me about a fun thing they did on vacation and they were all able to wait their turn!  Of course we all make mistakes, and this will get better with practice but we can always say "we're sorry" if we hurt someone's feelings!

Thanks for visiting my blog!