Our social emotional learning program, Second Step, begins a new unit this week that focuses on emotion management. In this unit, students are taught proactive strategies to help prevent strong feelings from turning into negative behaviors. When intense feelings are allowed to escalate, strong physiological reactions hamper students' ability to reason and to solve interpersonal and other problems without aggression. The ability to keep strong emotions from escalating and driving behavior allows students the chance to employ many of the other skills practiced this year, such as effective communication, assertiveness, negotiation and compromise, and problem-solving. During today's lesson, first graders learned to identify their own feelings by noticing the physical clues in their bodies. Using disappointment as the example, activities and discussions revolved around the idea that everyone has strong feelings sometimes.
