Whimsy Workshop Teaching

Whimsy Workshop Teaching

Teacher Clip Art, Literary Resources, Classroom Ideas

Stories To Teach Social Skills

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Stories are the perfect way to teach social skills and introduce new concepts. This post focuses on 16-Week Social Skills Program that features silly monsters who explore and illustrate essential social skills topics.

Each story has 5 lessons included, plus a printable version of the book for your classroom library! No need to hunt down the book to match the lessons – it’s all included in this engaging K-2 curriculum.

Monster Social Skills Stories

My students love everything about monsters, whether they [Read More…]

Social Skills Stories

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Do you use social skills stories in your classroom? One of my favorite things about teaching is sharing books and stories with my students. Even better if students can learn about important topics while they enjoy the stories and characters!

Bunny And Bear Social Skills Stories

This post focuses on our series of books called Bunny and Bear. Bunny and Bear books are social stories which teach essential social skills to young children. My own students immediately fell in love with [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…]

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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Using Morning Meetings for Teaching Social Skills

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 [Read More…]

Animated Stories for Social Skills

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Using stories to teach social skills is an engaging and effective strategy. This post outlines some quick and easy ways to incorporate social skills stories into your daily lessons. 

Online Animated Stories
A favorite find of mine is the site dedicated to the Howard Wigglebottom stories. These cute animations focus on character building, social and emotional development, and lots of other essential ingredients for the primary classroom.
And guess what? They are all animated on one website! We use one story each morning [Read More…]

Social Emotional Learning Tips

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Social Emotional Learning, or S.E.L., has always been a critical element of a successful classroom. However, it is being taught more explicitly in recent years. As primary teachers, we have probably already been doing many things to foster and encourage SEL in our classroom. Intuitively, we create a warm, inclusive environment. We help students to learn routines that are essential in a group learning environment. We help students to navigate peer conflict that may arise.

How can we go even even [Read More…]

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