This week, we worked on "expected behaviors" and "unexpected behaviors". Some of you may remember this from last year, but it is a foundational concept of our program and the language that we use with children. Expected behaviors make other people feel happy, calm or pleased. Expected behaviors lead to other people having good thoughts about us. Unexpected behaviors lead to people having bad thoughts about us. When we are unexpected, other people may feel uncomfortable, stressed, or upset. They may think our behavior is "weird". We work on this each day throughout the year. This week, all groups brushed up on the lingo and read a book called Clark the Shark. In this book, Clark is overly enthusiastic and because of that and his size, he intimidates other fish in his school. (School--get it!?!) I like this book to reinforce expected and unexpected behaviors because Shark is not engaging in "bad" behaviors or doing naughty things. It can be easy for children to correlate expected as "good" and unexpected as "bad", when in reality, it's more like expected is "comfortable" and unexpected is "weird". These terms can encompass friendly and naughty behaviors, but they can also encompass concepts that we found with Clark the Shark--like playing too rough or cheering too loudly. These behaviors can make other people feel nervous about you. This is a huge concept that we will consistently work on--I just wanted to provide a little background so you can work with the language at home as well!
Here's the part that is tricky this year: in teaching 4 different grade levels and kids with such different needs from one another, it's hard to keep them working on the same things. So, though each group read the Clark the Shark book and participated in the expected/unexpected behaviors conversation, we branched off a little this week to meet each groups' needs.
2nd grade finished their 5 point scales and spent a lot of time talking about voice volume with expected and unexpected behaviors.
3rd grade spent a day working on some tricky math (associative property--yikes!) and spent another day assessing. These students were a bit distressed that we didn't get to the lesson I had planned, so I explained to them what W.I.N. time (typically when I meet with students) is an acronym for (What I Need) and that most of the time, they need social skills, but today, they just need help with math. :)
4th and 5th grade Finished up their five point scales and enjoyed a game day in which they worked on compromising and losing (still a tricky skill for this crew--and most kids!)
The joke this week was:
"What does a nosy pepper do?
It gets jalapeno business!"
Our emotional vocabulary words was: furious. The children added it to their "mad" page in their social skills notebooks.
Have a super weekend!