Character Education

Character Education

To coincide with our multiple ways of recognizing positive student behavior, students learn character education lessons to build the foundation for making the good choices that lead to earning recognition. These lessons are often incorporated into our daily Morning Meeting but can also be taught during ELA and Social Studies lessons.

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) - this is a focus at Janvier as we believe that learning how to get along with others, make good choices, handle emotions, and be an upstanding citizen are all as equally as important as academic growth. 

Feelings Check-in - another part of our SEL is students showing how they feel when they start school in the morning. This gives children an outlet to acknowledge and understand their feelings and it also gives me a visual idea of how each child is feeling as they start the school day which gives me the opportunity to address any emotional needs right from the beginning of our day together as well as teach how to handle different emotions. We are utilizing a feelings chart with characters from Inside Out, below is a picture of what the display looks like. 

 Calming Spot - in my classroom I have a Calming Corner, this is a place that a child can ask to go to when they feel they need a break, can be told to go to if I think it would help cheer them up, or if they make a bad choice and I feel they need to regain control of their behavior...this is meant to be a quiet, safe place in the classroom for a child to be alone and think in order to collect themselves, regulate their emotions, feel better, and be ready to learn and make good choices. There are various items here like stuffed animals, stress balls, feelings and breathing posters, and a poster with various ways to cope when you’re feeling off.

Character Education - each morning I lead my homeroom in a character education lesson during our Morning Meeting. These lessons allow for my students and I to connect and to establish and strengthen relationships - it helps build my rapport with them and it also gives them a chance to build friendships with one another. We have specific lessons that we will complete some days, but it is also a time for our class to come together and discuss any issues that may be occurring within our classroom, learn different character traits, read books pertaining to good choices, and strengthen our bond as a classroom family.