Elementary: Jabari Jumps by Gaia Cornwall and Last Stop on Market Street by Matt De La Pena

Middle: Deep Down Popular by Phoebe Stone and Stat #1: Home Court: Standing Tall and Talented by Amar’e Stoudemire

High: In Case You Missed It by Sarah Darer Littman and Does My Head Look Big In This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah

Teachers can ask students to draw a picture with a written response on how they have experienced a specific emotion or ways in which they struggle with that emotion. Students can use the chat box and place an emoji or gif with their feelings or share their response outloud with the class virtually.

Standard Met: McREL Behavioral Studies Standard 3
(Understands that interactions among learning, inheritance, and physical development affect human behavior)

What You Need: Worksheet and answer key
What to Do: How often do your students think about their own thinking? Distribute the Brain Freezers worksheet. Have students work individually or in small groups to answer all of the riddles as quickly as possible. (You might set a time limit, such as 10 or 15 minutes.) When students are done, ask them which riddles were difficult and which were easy. (They will likely say that riddles in the first column were easier.) Invite students to share their answers. As they do so, write the most common responses on the board. After reviewing the answers and explanations using the supplied answer key, ask students if they have changed their minds about which riddles were easy. Elicit that the riddles in the first column seemed easy, but actually should have made them stop and think. Their wrong answers were the result of “fast thinking.” Conversely, the riddles in the second column seemed to require a lot of thought, when the solutions were actually simple; “slow thinking” likely bogged them down.

Use this activity as an opportunity to talk about times that “fast thinking” or “slow thinking” got them in trouble: “Fast thinking” can cause you to jump to conclusions, while “slow thinking” can make you dwell too much on problems.

Standard Met: McREL Behavioral Studies Standard 4
(Understands conflict, cooperation, and interdependence among individuals, groups, and institutions)

What You Need: Two worksheets: What's Their Attitude? Part I and Part II

What to Do: Introduce students to four communication styles: assertive (standing up for yourself and respecting others), passive (doing anything to avoid conflict), aggressive (standing up for yourself and not caring who gets hurt), and passive-aggressive (secretly angry). Give examples of these styles using characters from a book you’ve recently read in class.

Hand out the first worksheet, What’s Their Attitude? Part I, to learn how these different styles play out in
conflicts. Then, create a fictional disagreement, inviting student volunteers to role-play it. Dissect the conflict by identifying who was involved, what each person wanted, how the individuals communicated what they wanted, and if it was resolved, including who “won.” Talk about the different communication styles each actor exhibited.

To wrap up, have students complete the questions at the bottom of the worksheet and on the second worksheet (What’s Their Attitude? Part II) to anticipate how they might best act during a conflict. Refer back to these win-win solutions the next time a disagreement occurs in class. 

One of the most popular classroom activities to build self-esteem to facilitate at all grade levels is the “I Am” activity. It utilizes the effective and positive affirmation technique. Students are encouraged to think positively and with energy about what makes them who they are. The idea is that by writing down such positive thoughts, they are reinforced in the students’ minds, and by thinking about themselves and their attributes positively, their self-esteem is heightened.

To do the “I Am” activity, students will each need:

A sheet of paper

A pen or pencil

Some magazines or stencils

Scissors and glue

On the paper, students create a list of “I am”s. Some examples include: “I am a hard worker.” and “I am good at basketball.” Each sentence must begin with “I am…” The student writes down as many positive attributes and qualities about him or herself as he or she can think.

Then the students may decorate their list by adding magazine cut outs of things they like or by drawing, etc. The idea is that students will either keep these throughout the year, or they will be hung up in the classroom so they and their classmates remember to be positive throughout the year.