Overcoming Obstacles
Listening
Focus, confirm, respond. Middle schoolers engage in a series of activities designed to help them improve their listening skills. They listen to and try to solve a riddle and play a version of the telephone game. Participants learn that...
Overcoming Obstacles
Understanding Nonverbal Messages
The Overcoming Obstacles course for middle schoolers continues with a unit module on communication. In the first lesson, participants engage in a series of activities that help them recognize nonverbal clues and the importance of making...
Facing History and Ourselves
Exit Cards
Everyone wants to feel heard and valued. Provide learners with an opportunity to share their thoughts and have them heard with this closing routine. Participants use an exit card to share their response to prompts that ask them to share...
Facing History and Ourselves
Closing Challenge
The future can be yours to see with a bit of planning. That's the takeaway from a routine that asks participants to first brainstorm a list of personal and academic goals. Individuals then select one to focus on for the week, identify...
Facing History and Ourselves
Appreciate, Apology, Aha
Build a strong classroom community with a closing routine that asks each participant to share something they appreciate about their classmate(s), issue an apology if they may have hurt someone's feelings or an "aha" moment when they...
Facing History and Ourselves
Compass Points
Needs, Suggestions, Excitement, and Worries. A Compass Points worksheet asks pupils to give feedback on that day's lesson. Learners identify what they need from the instructor and classmates, what excites them about the class, what...
Facing History and Ourselves
Maintain and Modify
Maintain or modify? That's the question scholars answer as they reflect on their focus and engagement in that day's lesson. Were learners focused and contributing, or do they need to modify their level of participation?
Facing History and Ourselves
First Chapter Fridays
Fridays can be a challenge with learners already dreaming about their weekends. Here's a routine that will bring their minds back to the classroom. Read aloud the beginning of a story, sure to engage your listeners.
Overcoming Obstacles
Developing Personal Power
Money? Beauty? Education? The final lesson in the Confidence Building module encourages middle schoolers to consider the power they have to determine the course of their lives. After investigating different forms of power, participants...
Overcoming Obstacles
Avoiding Stereotypes
The activities in a lesson about stereotypes teach middle schoolers about the dangers of one-perception fits-all thinking. Participants learn how to check their perceptions by identifying ways to avoid stereotyping, like getting to know...
Overcoming Obstacles
Clarifying Values
The fourth instructional activity in the Confidence Building module asks participants to think about what they value and how these values influence their decisions. Class members engage in activities that help them identify what they...
Overcoming Obstacles
Staying Healthy
The third lesson in the Building Confidence module focuses on healthy habits. Middle schoolers engage in activities that underscore the need for a healthy diet, daily exercise, and a good night's sleep. They create customized food and...
Overcoming Obstacles
Identifying Strengths and Weaknesses
Through a series of activities, middle schoolers learn how to celebrate their strengths, identify their weaknesses, and brainstorm strategies they can use to turn their weaknesses into strengths.
Overcoming Obstacles
Giving and Earning Respect
Middle schoolers learn what respect means to them and their classmates with the opening exercise in a series of confidence-building lessons. Participants list people they respect and why they respect them. They generate a definition,...
Facing History and Ourselves
Take a Stand
Whole-heartedly agree! I sort of agree. Disagree! Class members indicate their stance on a controversial statement by participating in a Barometer activity.
Facing History and Ourselves
Fist to Five
A "Fist to Five" routine asks participants to indicate how they feel about an opening question, like how ready they are to start learning, how well they understand instructions, etc. Groups then suggest strategies to get learners ready...
Facing History and Ourselves
Rose, Thorn, Bud
Developing engaging opening and closing class routines is essential in post-COVID, face-to-face classrooms. The 7th routine of 15 in the Building Community series invites participants to begin class by reflecting on a success (rose), a...
Facing History and Ourselves
Slow Down with The Slowdown
Help learners bring their focus to the classroom with an opening routine that asks them to listen to a podcast about what a particular poem means to the narrator. Participants then share what's happening with them.
Facing History and Ourselves
Notable Quotable
Engaging learners in the classroom can be a challenge. Here's a bell ringer that can easily adapt to any subject area. Instructors post a "Notable Quotable" and ask learners to respond to it in their journals.
Carolina K-12
African American Troops in the Civil War
Middle schoolers explore the history of the African-American troops that served during the American Civil War. After reading primary source documents that detail the controversies about permitting freemen and former slaves to serve,...
Facing History and Ourselves
Three Good Things
A "Three Good Things" routine asks participants to sit quietly and reflect on three positive things in their world: family, school, community, or the world at large. After journaling about one that feels most important right now, writers...
Facing History and Ourselves
Picture This
Sometimes what you get is far more than what you first see. The third routine in the Building Community series asks participants to engage in a See, Think, Wonder strategy. Small groups analyze a projected image, infer what is happening,...
Facing History and Ourselves
Emoji Emotions
The BC (Before COVID) and AC (After COVID) classrooms differ. Instructors must reestablish protocols and opening and closing routines with learners who are no longer used to in-person learning. The second routine in the series designed...
Facing History and Ourselves
Mood Meter
Returning to in-class learning has proved to be a challenge for both teachers and learners. This series of 15 lessons provides instructors with ideas about establishing or re-establish classroom protocols and opening or closing routines...