My students need engaging activities to develop necessary social-emotional skills, I want to help them develop the skills to socialize and thrive in a diverse classroom community.
I love the diversity in my school. My classroom is culturally diverse and is comprised of students from many different backgrounds. I work with General Education Students, Students With Disabilities, and English Language Learners. My students possess a variety of talents and interests. I strive to find ways to help my students discover and foster those talents and interests.
As a special education teacher, I believe that every student possesses the potential to succeed academically, socially, and emotionally.
I must help them find and meet that potential. Help me to help them!
My Project
We have high expectations for fifth graders. In my school, they are the oldest students and they are expected to serve as role models for the younger students. However, they are still developing, both socially and emotionally. They are excited about being the oldest. They are nervous about transitioning to middle school. Most importantly, they are still children.
Students need opportunities to learn how to interact and respond to various social situations as they prepare for middle school.
Inspired by my recent professional development in the area of social-emotional learning, I will use these tools to immerse the students in interactive social-emotional learning opportunities.
Conversation Cubes will be used during icebreaker activities and discussion prompts. The goal if for students to find common traits between themselves and their peers. The instruments, which come from a variety of cultures, represent the multicultural atmosphere in our classroom and will serve a variety of purposes throughout our meetings. Books from the Building Empathy Library will serve as a foundation for our classroom library of books that emphasize social-emotional learning. Emotion Stones and Emotion-oes will be used to help us model and discuss how we express emotions nonverbally. This will emphasize the importance of interpreting nonverbal communication. The Emotional Intelligence Game will provide opportunities for students to practice their social skills in a variety of situations. These tools will be used during weekly meetings and will help the students develop skills that they will use throughout their academic careers and personal lives.
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