Last Hurrah!

While last week was a bit hit or miss with groups due to Wolf Ridge, class plays, and field trips, this week groups are a "sure thing" as we will be celebrating our last week of being together.  How fast did that go?!?

To honor the occasion we're doing our third annual "camp-in", complete with tent, campfire stories, and s'mores, all from the comfort of the Learning Center!  The kids get such a kick out of the novelty of "camping" and it's a great way to reflect on what we did and learned throughout the school year while we transition into thinking about summer.  I look forward to this week all year long!

 On a personal note, this has also been a great opportunity for me to put some closure not just to the school year, but also to my time in the Westonka district.  I won't be returning for the 2011-2012 school year as I have decided to pursue other opportunities that combine my love for travel with my passion for working with kids and families.  I'm a firm believer in taking risks and living life without regrets, so fingers crossed I've made the right decision!

I will be teaching Summer Enrichment in Mound through Westonka Community Education until September, as well as helping out with Adventure Club.  Hopefully I have an opportunity to work a little longer with your children, or at least say good-bye, before heading off.  Thank you for all of your support over the last three years! 

Here's to a great summer and a bright future!
Shannon

More Social Communication!

This week we are continuing with our social communication unit.  While last week we focused on what wasn’t spoken, but still communicated, this week we’re working on what is being said, but with words that have multiple meanings: idioms.

For students who are more “literal” it isn’t easy to understand slang expressions or words with multiple meanings.  Younger children especially have a hard time with this concept as they are still building their language skills.  Books like “Amelia Bedelia” do a great job of demonstrating these miscommunications.  When students aren’t able to understand what someone is saying, they miss out on the conversation or direction or might stand out among their peers socially.  By building better understanding of some of these common misunderstandings, we’re preparing students for successful social interactions.

Here’s a list of a few of the words and sayings we’ll be learning about:

Ball, hot, fly, chill, cool, feet, pop….

Pick up your room, get up and go, lose it, through the roof, couch potato….

There are lots of online resources, games, and tools for working on idioms.  We’ll be using a game on the website www.funbrain.com to build these skills.  As always, feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.  Have a great week!

Social Communication

It’s another wild and unpredictable week at Hilltop, so going with the flow most groups this week were able to move on to our social communication unit.  This week we focused on non-verbal communication---eye contact, facial expressions, body language, “looks” we get from other people.  For some students these are really difficult to "get" because it requires paying close attention to other people and being able to accurately guess what other people are thinking or feeling.

Several groups got to do a “No Talking Day” which consisted of using simple sign language to “check in” for the day and share how they were feeling, participating in a team-building tower-building activity, and finally choosing a prize to take home using more sign language (colors, please, thank you).  Not only were students forced to use a different way of communicating instead of speaking, they had to be especially attentive to the group and one another so they didn’t miss what was going on in group, which is also a very difficult task for some students.

Based on group needs there were a couple groups that played the “Understanding Faces” game (imagine Apples to Apples, but with faces instead of words), and yet a couple others finished up some activities that they had started the week before, waiting to start a more formal communication lesson until next week.

Looking forward, the school year is coming to an end in a month and so I’ve been preparing students for our last few meetings.  Next week we’ll do another lesson on social communication (literal and figurative language).  The week after I’ll be at Wolf Ridge with Shirley Hills so there will be no groups.  The last week of May we’ll do a lesson on transitions and the final full week of school we’ll have our end-of-the-year celebrations (yes, this probably means the tent will be back for an in-office camp out!).  Time will fly, that’s for sure.  As always, let me know if you have any questions and I’m more than happy to help!

More Stone Soup

How did this week get away from me so quickly?  Just when I thought things would be back to normal this week with MCAs finished up, NWEA tests and a day-long Earth Day celebration threw a monkey wrench into the schedule.  I suppose this is what we can expect for the last six weeks of school with field trips and end-of-year activities.  I’ll really have to practice what I preach about being flexible!

This week our groups were again a bit of “stone soup” as we played catch-up and worked around changing schedules.  Here’s a quick rundown of what we did this week:

Gr. 3 Boys---Talking, Feeling and Doing Game

Gr. 4 Boys---Team Building Activity

K Boys---Team Building Activity

Gr. 2 Boys---Talking, Feeling and Doing Game

Gr. 1 Girls---Hygiene, Friendship Island Game

Gr. 2 Girls---Friendship Island Game

Next week and the week after should be back to “normal” and we’ll begin our unit on communication/social thinking.  Next week, in fact, is one of my favorite lessons: nonverbal communication.  I can’t wait to share with you the plans when I blog on Monday!  Have a great weekend!

Handling Angry Feelings and Other Random Subjects

Due to the wildness and wooliness of our school’s schedule this month with testing, this week and next week will be “catch-up” weeks for our groups.  Some students have been able to meet regularly, but I haven’t seen some smiling faces for a few weeks now!  Here is the plan for groups this week:

Gr. 2 Boys---5 Point Scale Review

Gr. 1 Boys---Bounce Back (anger management game---very fun!)

K Boys---Bounce Back

Gr. 1 Girls---Self Care and Hygiene

Gr. 2 Girls---The Talking, Feeling, and Doing Game

Our third and fourth grade groups have all been put on hold due to testing.  Like many of our students, I can’t wait to get back to a normal schedule next week!  Enjoy the snow today (hopefully the last snow of the season?)!

Handling Angry Feelings, Part Two

As I look at my schedule for the next two weeks, I’m feeling bad because it will really be hit or miss with groups as we complete our MCA testing.  So as I write, bear in mind that the lessons I have planned for the next two weeks may or may not happen for your child, depending on how schedules have been affected. 

Now that I’ve gotten my disclaimer out of the way….

We’re continuing on through our unit of handling angry feelings.   Last week we read a story, made a 5 Point Scale of angry feelings, and did a worksheet to reinforce the different “levels” of being mad.  This week we will talk about healthy ways of handling angry feelings.  We all know that bottling feelings up isn’t healthy, but neither is venting (talking about the angry feelings again and again only makes us hold on to the anger longer and continually re-live what made us angry to begin with).  Obviously being violent with our words or actions aren’t good ideas, either.

I would like to encourage students to use some of the same strategies that help them when they’re feeling anxious---take a deep breath, think of something calming, talk to a trusted adult to come up with ways to take back control of a situation (usually that causes us anger), use exercise to release mad feelings, or write or draw out emotions.  It’s very human of us to “lose our cool” when we’re angry, making poor choices and feeling regretful afterward.  The more we can become familiar with what makes us angry and what helps us dissolve that anger, the better off we are.

Have a great week!

Handling Angry Feelings

For the past couple weeks we have been building our perspective-taking skills.  Last week was an especially fun time as students had the opportunity to share what they liked about their friends in group.  I was amazed that kindergarten through fourth grade students alike embraced the idea of making their groupmates feel good by writing kind things to them.  And, of course, it was fun to be able to bring an envelope full of positive thoughts about themselves home, too!  We will continue to build on this concept as we move into our next unit on handling angry feelings.

There's nothing that gives us "weirder" feelings about someone as when they "lose their cool" during frustrating situations.  Some people are naturally able to handle difficult feelings with grace and control, but the rest of us very human human beings have to develop the ability to appropriately manage when we are feeling upset or angry.  The earlier we can learn these skills, the better off down the road we will be, the better other people will feel about being around us.  We will start this month-long unit this week by building a 5 Point Scale of angry feelings.  Students should be familiar with this scale as it is something we learned about last fall, but we will adapt it to reflect the different levels of mad there are (from irritated to irate).  We will identify what our bodies and thoughts are like at each level.  We'll reinforce what we learn with real-life anecdotes as well as fun worksheets.  Next week we'll work on different techniques to handle angry feelings (like we did with anxious feelings).

One quick heads-up as we roll into MCA testing next week:  Schedules are crazy!  Even though it is just our third and fourth grade students testing, many grade levels' schedules are impacted due to lunches, specials, and staff being shuffled around in order to accommodate the demands of the MCAs.  I will do my best to make sure I see all of my groups each week, but I fully expect that things will be a little wild and woolly starting next Monday!  If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me. 

Have a great week!