January Update

 We hope you are enjoying the Recess Club blog and finding the information useful and the parent resources helpful within your home and out in the community.  Our Social Detectives just finished our self-regulation and friendship skills unit.

 In this unit we learned how to think with our eyes and make a smart guess. Michelle Garcia Winner from her book, Thinking about YOU, Thinking about ME, (2007) defines “smart guesses” (same as educated guess) as guesses you have to make based on a fact or some information you have learned about a topic and now you just have to add one more guess. An example of thinking would be noticing that your friend has on a t-shirt that says “Star Wars.” As smart guess would be that they like Star Wars so it would be a smart guess to ask them if they saw the new movie.

During recess club we also play the Thinking with our eyes game. To play this game, we sit in a circle on the floor and the leader has a ball in their hand. Only using their eyes, the leader looks at another person in the circle and rolls the ball to that person. That person then uses their eyes to pick the next player. This continues until everyone has had a chance to catch and roll the ball.

We finished the unit with learning how to appreciate our differences. Student's learned that every friend has differences. These differences may include their height, hair color or age. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Our students composed a list of what they find easy and hard for them at Robinson School. We learned that just because something may be easy for us and hard for our friend does not mean we can't be friends.  To handle these differences we may be an ICARE friend by offering to help our friend with things that are hard for them. It is always important to ask first if you can help! Our students then signed a pledge to promise to work on making their social smarts stronger by working on being a better friend using all the skills we learned this unit.

During the months of January and February, we will be shifting our focus to greeting and conversation skills. Students will learn the expected way to gain one’s attention and greet a friend. This will include lessons on eye contact, the importance of personal space, and an exploration into the volume and tone of our voices.  Our fellow social detectives will practice how to listen and answer by reciprocal turn-taking when having a conversation. This includes learning to stay on topic and how to wait for a pause in the conversation to change the topic. 

Students will practice these skills through watching videos such as, Model Me Kids, through social role-plays and books. We will discover the importance of how to manage their thoughts and words without interrupting by reading the story My Mouth is a Volcano , by Julia Cook. We will also learn how our word choice can impact our friendships with the story Sticks and Stones by Carol Cummings. More information on these books and other stories you may read at home can be found under the parent resource page.

-Mrs. Bonenfant, Ms. Casavant & Mrs. Terrio