We all care about our student’s emotional lives and we do things in the background to help them out–create a welcoming atmosphere, develop positive relationships with them, and help them develop positive relationships with each other. Marc Brackett’s book, Permission to Feel, contains an excellent tool for explicitly nourishing students’ emotional lives. The RULER acronym gives you a way to teach and talk about emotional regulation with your students. Over the last few months I’ve created a series of blog posts on the RULER acronym found in Brackett’s book. Here’s a round up of the posts: Intro to the Ruler Acronym Intro to the Mood Meter Help Students Recognize Emotions…
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An Efficient Way to Digitize Multiple Choice Quizzes
Sometimes I try to imagine how many of us our out there, going through our files and digitizing everything. It’s a gargantuan task and I’m slowly learning how to make the process easier, faster and more foolproof. Lately I’ve updated a series of multiple choice assessments that are part of my The Girl Who Drank the Moon novel study, and I developed a few tricks to make the whole process smoother. Here’s how I’m digitizing my multiple choice quizzes for distance learning: Mise en Place First up, get everything ready. So pull up the quiz you want to digitize and create a new Google Form. Pull up the quiz. Then…
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“To Do” vs. “To Be”–Planning in the Time of COVID-19
I spent the last week of December writing a long, extensive list of goals for 2020. The goals encompassed all aspects of life. By January 1 I had 10 pages of personal, spiritual, professional, relational, financial and parenting goals. Some of the goals were task-oriented, others were more values-based. Either way, I was ready for 2020. Then came the pandemic, tanking TpT sales and a sudden move. So while my values-based goals have become more relevant, my task-oriented goals have become less relevant. I’ve had to adjust my goals and expectations, and with the uncertainty looming over the 2020-2021 school year, more adjustment is sure to come. So I’ve been…
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Expressing Emotions, Social-Emotional Activities, RULER
This summer I completed a series of social emotional activities built around the RULER method for social emotional learning. Over the next few weeks I’d like to share them with you! You can purchase the activities in my TpT store, or use them as inspiration for your own activities. This post will focus on expressing emotions. This was one of the more difficult units to create–expression is valuable, but also risky. We want to help students express emotions in a way that is most likely to yield a good outcome. This unit helps students think through two things: Methods/Options: HOW can I express my emotions? Problem Solving: Which method/option best fits my situation right now?…
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Let Me Introduce Myself: The Teacher Behind “Teacher In Exile”
Hey there! According to WordPress Insights, about 45% of you are returning visitors. I don’t know who you are, but I’m honored that you’ve chosen to spend some of your valuable time here at Teacher In Exile, and I’d like to tell you a little bit about who I am, what I’m doing here, and what I hope to contribute. Teaching Raggedy Ann When I was a kid I played school a lot. I distinctly remember the day I realized my Raggedy Anne doll was my favorite student. Until then I hadn’t much liked her. Yarn for hair? Come on. I’d seen the doll section of the American Girl catalogue.…
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Labeling Emotions, Social-Emotional Activities, RULER
Last month I completed a series of social emotional activities built around the RULER method for social emotional learning. Over the next few weeks I’d like to share them with you! You can purchase the activities in my TpT store, or use them as inspiration for your own activities. This post will focus on labeling emotions. This unit is my favorite in the RULER bundle because it’s all about building an emotional vocabulary, and it lends itself well to some of your usual vocabulary activities. Here’s a peek at some of them: Here’s another feelings journal that expands on the ones in the recognizing and understanding units. Now students find themselves on the mood meter,…
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Genre Study Roundup: 11 Posts to Get You Started, or Up Your Genre Study Game
Whew, this series on genre study has worn me out. But now we have this nice little library of genre study resources! Here are some posts to get you started if you’re hoping to learn more about genre study: If you’d like to preview or purchase ready-made genre units, this free Genre Study Catalogue is a good starting point. Happy reading!
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Regulating Emotions, Social-Emotional Learning (part 5)
Here we are the last step of the RULER method–regulation! A quick note before we complete this little series. You’ve probably already noticed that a linear process (recognize, then understand, then label, then express, then regulate) doesn’t completely match how we experience and respond to our emotions. The RULER method is a way of teaching these skills in a logical order, but the steps don’t necessarily need to be carried out in this order. Once students have the skills, they can apply them as they see fit! Okay here we go, on to regulation. What is Emotional Regulation? We regulate our emotions when we try to adjust them in some…
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Design a FULL Genre Unit that You Can Use Year After Year
Last week I wrote about sketching out a genre unit. Today, we’ll look at the nitty gritty of planning a genre unit. Here are my goals when creating a genre unit: Build on the foundation of the last genre unit during mini lessons (spiral review). Immerse students in the genre by delivering daily read alouds. Give students ways to apply new learning to their independent reading (guided practice). Guided by these goals, my planning revolves around mini lessons, read alouds and guided practice. I want my genre units to be useful year after year, so I plan MORE lessons than any one teacher is likely to need. Having a library…
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Expressing Emotions, Social Emotional Learning (RULER, part 4)
The first three steps of the RULER method–recognize, understand, and label emotions–seem fairly straightforward and academic compared to the next two–express and regulate. Here is where the emotion comes out, and there’s a lot of potential for both healing and harm. So if there’s danger in expressing emotions, why should we (teachers) even go there? Because one way or another, kids are going to express their emotions. The questions isn’t if our students will express their emotions, the question is: will they express themselves in ways that are helpful or unhelpful? So in this post we’ll talk about helping students express their emotions in ways that are appropriate, healthy, and…
