Making Decisions for Kids | Showing Courage and Moving Forward | SEL

Description

With these activities for elementary students, you can help your students make independent decisions and show courage in the face of a tricky situation. This set of lessons will help kids understand the importance of making choices, make independent decisions, and understand how feelings impact a decision.

These lessons have been designed to pair with the book When Things Aren’t Going Right, Go Left by Marc Colagiovanni.

Are you ready to Move Mountains with your students and their character education goals this year? Incorporating SEL activities into your classroom is easy with this picture book companion to help students learn how to make decisions, show courage, and move forward.

These lessons about making decisions and moving forward include five days of engaging and informative activities:

• Day 1: Students will reflect on how self-reliant they are.
• Day 2: Students will explore some of the feelings that may prevent them from making decisions.
• Day 3: Students will learn what it means to confront their feelings.
• Day 4: Students will learn the importance of making decisions to forge their own path.
• Day 5: Students will learn about burdens and the importance of shrinking feelings/emotions when needed.

This resource includes EVERYTHING you need to implement these lessons. Just grab a copy of the book (you can also find fun read-aloud versions on YouTube), and you’ll be set to go!

A Note on SEL: The term “SEL” is not incorporated into this product. Each book focuses on specific personal growth skills and themes to use in your classroom for community building, personal growth, and character lessons.

What’s included in this resource all about making decisions and moving forward?

• 3 SEL Class Objectives
• 5 Days of Complete Lesson Plans for SEL Integration
• Literacy Integration
• Talking Points and Big Ideas
• How To Show Self-Reliance – Poster for Display
• How Self-Reliant Am I? – Self-Reflection Activity
• Fear, Doubt, Worry, Frustration – Half-Page Classroom Posters
• Fears, Worries, Frustrations, Doubts – Writing a rebuttal to negative feelings/emotions in the text.
• Diving into Doubt – A foldable booklet where students will make inferences on doubts in a picture and then explore a possible rebuttal to those feelings.
• Too Big, Too Loud, Too Overwhelming – Exploring hypothetical situations that might be overwhelming and brainstorming ways to leave them behind.
• The Feeling of Overwhelm – Student Reflection
• Choose Your Own Path – An engaging game that gets students out of their seats and helps them to think through hypothetical situations.
• Quote Me On It – An optional activity to reflect on inspirational quotes.
• Before, During, and After Reading Discussion Prompts
• Morning Meeting Greeting Cards
• 5 Peaks and Pits Social Scenario Cards
• Extension Activity Suggestions
• Companion Book Suggestions
• Slide Decks for selected activities (see preview)

What are the class goals and SEL objectives for When Things Aren’t Going Right, Go Left?

• We will learn the importance of making choices about our paths in life.
•  We will consider why believing in our abilities and decisions is important.
•  We will evaluate our feelings and emotions and how they impact our decisions.

How Can I Incorporate These Lessons Into My Classroom?

• Morning Meeting
• Literacy or Science
• Read Aloud
• As guidance or counseling lessons
• … any way you can dream up!

Our mission with Moving Mountains is to equip teachers with high-quality supplemental lessons that accompany exceptional picture books and teach students critical interpersonal skills. Our goal is to foster a strong classroom community and inspire lifelong learners.  It is our vision that through these lessons, students will become more self-aware about their place and purpose in their classroom community and beyond.

More about Moving Mountains:

❤️ Each book has been carefully selected to appeal to a wide age and grade range (2nd-5th grade) while being easily accessible to teachers. The accompanying lessons were designed with a specific character trait or personal skill in mind. Activities and objectives have been designed to fit within these skills, but please remember that there are many themes and relevant learning opportunities in each book.

❤️ Each week includes multiple lessons and activities. Depending on your classroom setup and the amount of time you have to devote to each book’s lessons, you may pick and choose which ones work best for you and your students.

❤️ While the weekly activities are different to accompany each book, some consistent components include Peaks and Pits Scenario Cards, Morning Meeting Greeting Suggestions, Extension Activities, and Companion Book Suggestions.

Why did we create Moving Mountains? Moving Mountains has been a dream of mine for several years – As a current educator, I am passionate about bringing picture books into my classroom, particularly during my morning meeting to help my students develop their personal goals. Each week, I choose one focus book and a specific skill or skill that it teaches. Throughout the week, we discuss the book and complete different activities relating to it. I have seen incredible growth in my students’ social and personal skills using this method, and I have dreamed of creating full units that are ready to go for teachers! Moving Mountains was born from the need for excellent, ready-to-use companion activities. I have teamed up with Andrea Burns from BookishBurns to create these units for you. I hope you love them as much as we do!

What makes Moving Mountains different from other book companions? We carefully designed these activities to fit the unique elements of each book. With very few elements repeated throughout different books, your students will never tire of seeing the same template activities over and over again. This has also enabled us to create specific, SEL skill-based activities aligned to each book and maximize the impact of these beautifully written picture books.

Why use picture books to teach reading and SEL skills? Simply put, picture books bring SEL skills to life! Picture books are short but beautiful authentic texts that help students see character traits and skills from different perspectives. We can use picture books to explicitly teach these important skills. Instead of telling students what it means to work as a team, we can SHOW them teamwork through character interactions in picture books and allow them to form their own definition of teamwork. Picture books have concrete stories and characters to reference as they continue to think about these skills. As a bonus, picture books are highly engaging for students!