Whimsy Workshop Teaching

Teacher Clip Art, Literary Resources, Classroom Ideas

Quotation Station: Writing About Quotes

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I’m a big fan of good memes or quotations, and love to share and discuss them.
If a quotation is educationally meaningful, I often will share it with my students. They are perfect for inspiring meaningful discussions and higher level thinking! Sometimes we use these quotations or sayings as a springboard for journal writing.
While collecting quotations for students, I thought: Why not add them to my writing center choices?

 
Because I teach primary students, I created templates to support student writing by [Read More…]

Social Skills Poetry

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I’m always looking for new ways to integrate social skills into my teaching.
Poetry is a fun new way to teach social skills!

This year, we decided to integrate social skills in our teaching with our Poem of the Week! Each week we focus on a different social skill and use it to read, write, discuss, sort, and so much more!
Here are some of our poetry topics:
For Carpet Time:
Hands In My Lap, I Can Raise My Hand,  Meet At The Carpet, Ready To [Read More…]

Teaching Social Skills: Daily Group Lessons

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Even though social skills are so important, it’s often difficult to fit the lessons in each day. When they do happen, it’s often in reaction to a conflict that has occurred, and there’s usually not much time to really discuss the topic thoroughly.
Last year, I tried a different approach. I thought, if I could begin each day with a ten-minute talk with my students about class routines and expected behavior, I’d be more likely to see success when addressing the [Read More…]

Tips for Teaching Responsibility

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Welcome to the Social Skills Ideas Bank!
The Social Skills Idea Bank is a series of related posts, each dedicated to sharing strategies for teaching a particular social skill.
As teachers, our strength lies in sharing our ideas, experiences and strategies!
This is a growing list, and you are invited to contribute in the comments section. We hope you will, because there’s nothing like a good idea shared between teachers to make our jobs easier.
In this post you will find lots of simple ways to encourage students [Read More…]

Teaching Social Skills: Calm Down Strategies

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Welcome to the Social Skills Ideas Bank!
The Social Skills Idea Bank is a series of related posts, each dedicated to sharing strategies for teaching a particular social skill.
As teachers, our strength lies in sharing our ideas, experiences and strategies!
This is a growing list, and you are invited to contribute in the comments section. We hope you will, because there’s nothing like a good idea shared between teachers to make our jobs easier.
This post is about simple ways to guide students to manage [Read More…]

Teaching Social Skills with Social Stories

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WHAT ARE SOCIAL STORIES?
 
Do you use social stories in your classroom?
Social stories are simple stories that describe common situations that occur frequently in the classroom. They state a situation clearly, possible feelings that may occur, self-talk strategies that can be helpful, and the desired outcomes. These stories have been especially helpful for my younger students, students with autism, or students with self-regulation problems.
Over the last 20+ years of teaching, I have seen many students struggle to navigate the complex social situations in [Read More…]

Seasonal STEM with Partner Plays

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My students LOVE doing STEM Challenges. We began the year working on Fairy Tale Challenges from THIS resource, and it was a big hit!
Now, we have added more fun by adding SEASONAL STEM projects!
SANTA STEM
The first ones we tried were all about Santa!

Each challenge is introduced with a partner play. This means we can integrate some literacy skills into the lessons. I have found that using partner plays give the STEM challenges context, and makes the building task much more [Read More…]

Social Emotional Learning in the Primary Classroom

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SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING
Years ago I would get some disapproving looks when I mentioned how much classroom time I dedicate to social emotional learning. “What about the curriculum! You’ll never get through it all if you don’t start right away!”
But I did get through it all, sometimes with time to spare. Why? I found that if we solidified expectations for kindness, inclusion and self-management early, and spent a LOT less time on disruptions through the year. Plus, we were shaping future citizens; it’s not [Read More…]

Books That Teach Friendship and Social Skills

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Our class spends a LOT of time learning social skills, problem solving, friendship and conflict resolution. This helps to create a peaceful environment where learning can thrive, and we do not have to spend the majority of our time solving interpersonal conflicts. We use interactive lessons from The Kindness Classroom SEL curriculum, along with many of the books listed below to reinforce concepts.
 

Click on any cover to see details of the story.
 
Llama Llama Time To Share by Anna Dewdney

Franklin Plays the [Read More…]

Teaching Empathy and Kindness: A Book List

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The Social Skills Idea Bank is a series of related posts, each dedicated to sharing strategies for teaching a particular social skill.
As teachers, our strength lies in sharing our ideas, experiences and strategies!
This is a growing list, and you are invited to contribute in the comments section. We hope you will, because there’s nothing like a good idea shared between teachers to make our jobs easier.
This post is about books you can use to teach empathy in the classroom
Let’s get started!
How do [Read More…]

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