R-E-S-P-E-C-T...What Does It Mean To Me

This week in our Social Learning Bunches our students shared and learned about being “Respectful”.  We explored that in order to be a strong social thinker, we must show respect to our teachers, friends, and family by taking responsibility for our actions and thinking about others. We demonstrated how this "looks" while communication and learning, and then had the students practice using concrete, observable, behaviors.

First, each student is assigned a "Job"--Listener or Talker. We teach our social learners that EVERYONE has a job during communication. There is usually someone who is talking such as a parent, teacher, or peer. When this person is talking or teaching, everyone else’s job is to listen and NOT talk. Being a respectful Talker looks like:

1. Not talking about one’s SELF  without looking to see others reactions

2. Not talking about SELF INTERESTS only 

This was a very slow process and these steps had to be taught for every conversational turn. Toward the end of the group, students were demonstrating that they could be rerspectful listeners and talkers when engaged in social learning. For the quiet/shy students, difficulties were noticed in initiating, coming up with questions/concepts, or simply taking a turn, choices were given and thus making students successful. We also talked about the difference between Rules vs. Responsibilities. All students were able to recite rules and consequences, we were very proud to see this. When we talked about responsibilities and the impact of making other people feel good when we are responsible and do things, not because we MUST, but because it makes others feel good, and the students were able to share examples.

Things to try at home and in the classroom that shows being RESPECTFUL while "thinking about others" that our social learners discovered and shared with the group are:

1. Give compliments and say nice words

2. Give/Model good examples to younger students,

3. Bring materials to class (especially when working in groups)

4. Clean up

5. Do the right thing

6. Be a good person and friend

7. Keep other people’s property safe

8. Be Flexible!