Five for Five 5-1

Linking up for another Five for Friday with Doodle Bugs Teaching!

First of all... Can you believe it's already May? I love love love my class this year. They are such a unique group, and I do not want to let them go!!!!!!!

 We were studying Cause/Effect with non-fiction text this week. This can be really challenging for teachers and students because it links on and on. After teaching it, I realized this is a perfect reading skill to connect to social-emotional learning! One of reflections as a teacher that I would like to do more with next year - Integrating social-emotional lessons into our reading instruction. Using social situations to introduce the concept of Cause/Effect has two meaningful outcomes for your students: social learning and reading thinking skills! (Ex: Cause- Invited a first grader to play tag at recess. Effect- I felt happy because I helped someone else have fun at recess.) You could do more complex social situations depending on what social skills you are working with your students.

We had a lunch this week at our school where teachers make salads, desserts, and sides and invite in all the parents volunteers to join us for lunch. Though it's more thing to buy and make, it is really nice to have positive relationships with parents and gives our school that happy, collaborative feel!

The BEST part of our week was getting our baby caterpillars! The students are so excited. They are ready to be very responsible. They are being just like mom's and dad's to their caterpillars. They gave them names and are so excited to tell their families all about it. I love when the classroom is filled with excitement and the students feel like they have HUGE news to tell about what they are doing in second grade! Gave me a very happy teacher heart this week!

Back to the topic of social-emotional learning, I started doing some work related to the Social-Emotional Standards by serving on our District's Committee. I had the opportunity today to attend a conference by Michelle Garcia Winner. She is an SLP but also an author to many books and creator of resources for social-emotional learning. Her resources are SUPER engaging!!! It's like a comic book that students can relate to that helps them understand more about their thinking and their interactions. I see many benefits to using this program with students with autism (who the program is commonly used with). However, I think there are definitely elements that can be implemented whole class to help all students become more self-aware and ultimately self-regulate their behavior. Here's one of her resources on my "wish list" for our grade level.

 

I saw this verse on somebody's Instagram this week at just the right moment: May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13.