by Helium01

Created on: July 26, 2010

In amongst the recent government push to raise academic standards in elementary aged pupils, especially in literacy and numeracy, other important developmental factors are becoming increasingly ignored.

There is precious little time devoted to those pupils who excel in areas other than reading, writing and math, and even less time to teach them how to handle difficult social interactions and express their feelings appropriately.

This articles lays out the basics of a lesson that will help to teach these vital life skills:

1. Establish ground rules

Depending on the age of the children, you can either dictate these or, for older children, ask them to come up with appropriate behaviour expectations and sanctions for those who don’t follow them.

At minimum you need to have a rule about how to listen to each other, how to indicate you wish to contribute something to the discussion and how to respond to something you disagree with.

2. Energizing game

For younger children, this is a good time to play an energetic moving around game to help the more kinesthetic learners amongst them to keep their concentration. For the older children, this is an opportunity to create discussions about your chosen topic.

For example, a session dedicated to showing respect could start with a round of Simon Says, with a discussion of how you showed respect to the person being Simon.

3. Discussion

This can take many forms, but all with the aim of getting the children to discuss what they already know and share it with the rest of the group. Options include discussing a particular question with a partner, going round each person for their opinion, role playing scenarios or a communal thought shower. From this you should be able to gauge what level the students are operating at.

4. The thought provoker

This is where you present the key message of the lesson. Again this can be delivered however you see fit, through discussion or a game, but either way it’s essential to check each student’s understanding of what you’ve been saying and how they can apply it in their day to day lives.

5. Calming down

This kind of session is much more emotionally involved than regular literacy or numeracy lessons, so it’s important to finish on a positive note that ensures the children to know that the session is ending and they need to return to normal learning behaviours. This can be some sort of relaxation, a visualisation of how they will use their new knowledge, or a simple game that allows each person to be celebrated.

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