Now more than ever, it’s so important to include social-emotional learning in our daily lessons. Students are coming to school without the necessary relaxation, regulation, and coping techniques to help them deal with their feelings. If you’re looking for a way to build SEL into your daily schedule, the Skills for Big Feelings book and resource bundle are just what you need!
Teach Important SEL Lessons with Skills for Big Feelings
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One of the most impotant parts of social-emotional learning is self-awareness, which is exactly what Skills for Big Feelings practices Through the lessons, you will help your students identify their feelings and develop strategies to cope with them.
How to Use Skills for Big Feelings
Skills for Big Feelings is organized into twelve sessions, which can be covered over a period of twelve weeks. However, if you don’t have a lot of time built into your schedule for SEL, you can spread the activities out over a longer period of time.
Each session follows a specific schedule, so you and your students will get into a routine. This makes the lessons easier for you to teach, and your students will know exactly what to expect when it’s time for SEL.
These are the parts of each session:
- Opening practice
- Review agreements
- Visual schedule
- Mindful Moment and Feelings Check
- Activity
- Practice and color the three weekly skills
- Mindful Moment and Feeling Check
- Closing practice
- And a family resource you can send home with your students
Teaching a Lesson
When you’re ready to start the first session, you will find that the lessons are very easy to implement. They tell you exactly what to do and say, so you don’t have to spend any time planning SEL lessons. Just read over the lesson ahead of time, gather any needed materials, and you’re ready to teach!
I know some of you have limited time for SEL lessons, so I love that each session is broken down into smaller parts. Even if you only have 10 minutes for SEL each day, you can choose one part of lesson to do in that time and then pick up where you left off the next day.
Weekly Relaxation Skills
One of my favorite things about Skills for Big Feelings is that it includes so many relaxation and calming skills that your students can use any time they are feeling strong emotions, like anxiety or anger. You will teach your students three relaxation skills in each session, so by the end of the 12 weeks, they will have 36 different ways to manage their strong feelings!
Included Materials
Within the Skills for Big Feelings book, you will find so many helpful resources that will make it easy to implement the lessons.
- Lesson Plans – Each session has detailed lesson plans that walk you step-by-step through the process of teaching the SEL strategies.
- A Student Workbook – Copy the workbook for your students so they have all the activity sheets and strategy guides in one place.
- Family Resources – Send home the family newsletters so your students’ parents know what they are practicing at school. The relaxation strategies are included so your students can practice them at home, too.
- IEP and Treatment Plan Objectives – If you are a special education teacher or guidance counselor, there are a lot of IEP goals included that you can use to measure student progress and growth.
Using the Book and Resource Bundle
If you want even more resources to use with Skills for Big Feelings, the author, Casey O’Brien Martin, put together a whole bundle of extra activities and games that will help you extend and practice the lessons.
When you purchase the Super Ultimate Bundle, you will get:
- Digital Interactive Notebooks – These slideshows walk your students through each session. They include all the activities, and your students can answer the questions directly in the digital notebook. These will make teaching the lessons even easier!
- Coping Skills Craftivities – This resource provides cute crafts your students can make to go along with each of the relaxation strategies.
- Games – Make practicing SEL skills fun for your students with the included games. There are games to go with each of the sessions, and they work great for small group practice.
- Mindful Moments MP3s – Use the included MP3s for the mindful moments to walk your students through strategies that will help them relax and reduce stress.
- A Pacing Guide – If you don’t have time to complete a whole session in one day, there is a schedule to help you separate the parts into different lessons on Monday through Friday.
There’s even a Scope and Sequence to show you exactly how to fit all the extra resources into the Skills for Big Feelings sessions!
When you use all of these resources with your students, you will be amazed by how well they apply the strategies to manage their big feelings. They will be happier and less stressed. When they have strategies to help them deal with their feelings, they are able to focus on their work and build better relationships with others.
Click the link to purchase Skills for Big Feelings and the Super Ultimate Bundle!
What Do You Think?
What strategies do you use to help your students manage their feelings?
Let me know in the comments below.
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