Knowing Your Students Inside Out!

Social-Emotional Learning

Social-emotional learning is the ability to recognize and manages one's own emotions, solve problems, and build positive relationships with others. In the classroom, this looks like daily check-ins, reflections through art and writing, collaborating, sharing, and understanding, and community building games and activities. The teacher should use student-centered discipline practices, be supportive and inviting, set high and attainable expectations, and encourage responsible decisions. 

Activity Examples:

• Dail Check-ins: This could be written, a wall-chart, or even a google survey.
• Calm Down Corner: Choose a secluded area, add visual supports, and refocusing activities (breathing exercises, stuffed animals, coloring book, journals, calming bottles)
• Calming Bottles: This is a great bonding activity for the entire class! All you need are bottles of some sort and things to fill them with!
• Morning Meetings: This can include greetings, sharing, activities, GoNoodle, and routine rundowns. 

Conscious Discipline

Conscious discipline gets rid of reward and punishment. This type of discipline allows teachers to address the emotional and social issues of their students. Instead, it includes empathy, composure, choices, positive intent, consequences, composure, assertiveness, and encouragement. An example of this being used within the classroom is the "Time Machine" method. To begin this method, have students "roll back time" by rolling their hands and wish each other well to set positive intent. Then, ask the students if they are willing to go back and solve the problem at hand. Have them take some calmin breaths and use conflict resolution sentence starters to begin the process of solving the problem. 

Apps:

• Superbetter- sets goals, uses games to progress healthy behavior
• Smiling Mind- guided meditation
• Peekapak- four-week curriculum to help build self-regulation and empath
• Avokiddo- learn essential emotional skills through dressing and taking care of characters

Seriously Awesome Student Led Conferences & Digital Portfolios

Student-led conferences are a great way for students to showcase their work, take responsibility for their own learning, and lead their own learning. Autonomy is key. This is very different than a teacher-led conference. In this situation, the teacher is only the facilitator and the students are the leaders. It is student-centered and student lead. Students are able to lead discussions, be in their own process, pick out and prepare the materials to be shown, and are able to reflect on their own work. The teacher is there to facilitate, mediate, provided support if it is needed, provide expectations for the meeting, and may even provide a script for the student if needed. Parents are able to listen, engage, encourage, and ask their child questions.
In order to prepare for this, teachers need to keep students' work samples, give the student autonomy to choose what they want to include, structure the work for the student, and LET GO!
What is I have an ELL family?? Well, I'm glad you asked! If the teacher can have a translator present, that would be great! There are also translating apps, such as Google Translate that could be used. The teacher should also try to incorporate the diversity in your classroom and encourage the use of native language!

Digital Portfolios are a collection of student performance and assessments over time in the digital form. This should be standards-based and show significant student engagement. Work that is showcased is chosen by the student and should include the students' reflections and comprehension.

Apps to use:

• Artsonia Kids Art Museum - empowers students to exhibit their work
• WeLearnedIt - allows students to showcase, reflect, and comment on student work
• Sesame - Custumizable rubric creation

Benefits of Digital Portfolios:

• Great way to express and show student growth over time and provides a record of their educational career.
• Gives teachers the opportunity to see students' learning and areas of improvement.
• Gives students an audience! 

Integrated Arts In Early Childhood Education

Integrated Arts Digital Portfolio

Here is a Digital Portfolio I made for my 21st Century Teaching and Learning class. This presentation has many great resources for how to integrate the arts into the Early Childhood curriculum. Enjoy!

 
DIY Integrated Arts Crafts

Creative Movement Cube

 This was super easy and cheap to make.

Supplies:
Styrofoam cube
Cardstock
Scissors
Hot glue

I personally made each of the activities in a word document. I just typed the activity and inserted clipart underneath it. Once it was all printed out, I laminated it and cut it out, then hot glued each one onto the sides of the cube.

Classroom Use:
You can use this as a fun and interactive activity for creative movement. Have students roll the cube like a dice and do the activity it lands on.

http://choices4children.blogspot.com/2013/10/move-like-animal-cube.html

Drama/Theater Puppets

These were surprisingly easy and fun to make!

Supplies:
Felt
Scissors
Marker
Hot glue
Googly Eyes (optional)

I printed out the template from the website below and used it to cut out each piece of the puppets. Then, I hot glued them together and drew the mouths or noses on and added googly eyes! Super simple and cute!

Classroom Use:
These can be used for so many different things!

• They can enhance storytelling time or read aloud time. 
• They can be used for drama/theater. 
• Students can use them to help express themselves.
• Used as an interactive activity during centers.

https://30minutecrafts.com/2018/01/no-sew-felt-puppets.html

Sensory Letter Activity

Originally, I started to make the road letters myself but ended up printing out the road letters that were already made on the website below. However, if you want to make them yourself, I'll list the supplies below.

Supplies:
Cardstock
Black or grey construction paper
White or yellow marker or paint

Cut each letter from construction paper and glue them onto white cardstock. Add white or yellow road lines to each letter. Laminate each one (optional).

Classroom Use: 
Have students use hot wheels cars or their finger to trace over each letter. This is great to help them learn their letters and can even be used with numbers and punctuation, as well.
https://www.giftofcuriosity.com/product/road-letters/