Blogs on Upper Elementary (3-5)

Do you remember learning to tie your shoes? Or learning to bake a cake? Or learning to read? I'm guessing you did not learn by watching a video or listening to a lecture. You learned by being shown, and by practice. The same principle applies to our teaching! We must model for our students.

In this nine-part series, we will look at important factors that influence the happiness and social and emotional learning of elementary school age children. These are very useful in helping students learn, manage emotions better and increase empathy. Each blog features one letter of the acronym HAPPINESS:

1. H = Happiness
2. A = Appreciation
3. P = Passions and Strengths
4. P = Perspective
5. I = Inner Meanie/Inner Friend
6. N = Ninja Mastery
7. E = Empathy
8. S = So Similar
9. S = Share Your Gifts

In this post, we will explore Ninja Mastery, a.k.a. learning emotional management.

You may have read Mark Phillips' blog post about the ongoing documentary project A Year at Mission Hill. A month after the launch of the video series, the buzz has only grown. With a fantastic and artful Prezi about the series, new videos released every two weeks, and resources tailored to each episode from orgs around the world including Ashoka's Start Empathy project, What Kids Can Do, Responsive Classroom, Learning Matters, and more, this is shaping up to be a new kind of Web resource for those interested in education reform on a grassroots level. I'm excited to share episodes two and three here.

One of the best and most important approaches to take in handling media use among children is for families to sit down together and create a family media agreement.

The virtue of this approach is that it enlists all stakeholders in a conversation and empowers and invites kids and parents to think about what they do with media, when they are on media, how they engage with media and how often they use media at home.