Today's SEL theme was resilience. I shouldn't be surprised that only 2 of my 16 homeroom students had heard of the word. No one knew exactly what it meant but we figured that out together.
The lesson asked students to write 2 positive emotions and 1 negative emotion they've experienced recently on a piece of paper. Past lessons have taught me that my homeroom students have a limited vocabulary when it comes to explaining their emotions, so I found a resource to help them identify what they've been feeling.
The last part of the lesson asked them to take their paper and fold it up to make a paper airplane so we could fly it around to one part of the classroom. Then students would choose a paper that was not theirs to see if they felt similar emotions to the ones that flew to them.
It was then that I discovered that 95% of my homeroom students did not know how to make a paper airplane. I found that statistic to be even more shocking than when I realized they don't know what resilience means.
This is teaching in 2024, no matter the grade. It's enough to make me want to stop everything and teach students how to shuffle a deck of cards and where a stamp goes on an envelope among 1,000 other things.
ReplyDeleteWow! That does seem surprising. I'm guessing about half of my first graders do know how to make paper airplanes (as I discovered during a rainy day recess). Sounds like a great lesson, even if there was more teaching than you anticipated!
ReplyDelete