The District’s SEL Focus for the third 9 weeks is Social Awareness and Empathy and the BPE Life Skill for January has also been Empathy. Ms. Ashorn and Miss Edwards visited classrooms to reinforce these skills through the monthly counselor lesson. Students explored perspective taking through reading We’re All Wonders (K-2) and The Potato Chip Champ (3-5). Students practiced using the Mood Meter and putting themselves in each character’s shoes. We also discussed opportunities characters in the book could have used empathy.
After reading the book, students played a game allowing them to use their social detective/social awareness skills. They looked at pictures of young people expressing different emotions and tried to guess what they were feeling. We discussed how to read facial expressions and body language to decide how someone is feeling.
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Today we hosted a parent coffee to discuss how to promote positive peer relationships and provide children with effective problem solving strategies. We reviewed the power of modeling empathy as parents as well as explicitly teaching it to our kids. We discussed importance of empowering children to problem solve on their own and shared the STEP strategy for solving problems: Say the problem without blame, Think of safe and respectful solutions, Explore consequences (if…., then….), Pick the best solution & make a plan. While there is far too much information to cover here in our counselor corner, we have posted the slides to our SEL website. You can view the slides here.
The District’s SEL Focus for the third 9 weeks is Social Awareness and Empathy. At BPE we are reinforcing the development of social awareness and empathy through our January Life Skill. On Wednesday, we watched a video recorded by a group of 3rd graders to introduce what it means to show empathy and how students can earn a heart to put on the life skills board. Students learned that empathy means figuratively putting ourselves in others’ shoes to understand how they may be feeling.
One of our greatest tools for teaching empathy as educators and parents is to model empathy ourselves. Other tips for teaching empathy at home are included below. For more in depth information, take a look at these articles from Harvard and Parenting Science.
Friday, January 19, join us in the library for a parent coffee to learn how to support and empower your child to have successful peer relationships. We will cover information on how to help students better understand the different type of conflicts: from teasing to mean moments or ongoing conflict and bullying. We will also address some problem solving and conflict resolution strategies. |