Building Character in Middle School


Do you incorporate social emotional learning into your class?  Then these ideas are for you! #activities #lessons



Once upon a time, I would share five things from the past week that I did in my class.  This particular point in time was when I found myself focusing on character to help with student behavior.  Read on to see how you might incorporate some of these ideas into the social emotional learning in your classroom.








I use this chart to track progress on the skills we are learning in our middle school language arts class.  #anchorchart #criticalinformation


We have been working on narrative elements this last marking period and are just about ready for our Embedded Assessment.  This chart is a nice way to track the skills we have been learning and to make sure we are "Good to Go" for the assessment.  Of course, being "Good to Go" requires some honesty on the part of the students...which leads me to my next item:



It's important for middle school students to remember who they are and what they stand for to help them regulate their behavior.  #socialemotionallearning

I asked this question of my students to help them realize that their actions need to match who they are.  This led to a great conversation about character traits and how one's behavior is important!  Students hadn't really thought about what their behavior communicates about them.


I like to give my middle school students visual reminders of their character to help them make good choices.  #socialemotionallearning #activities

Then we listed our own character traits on our own "ships" as reminders of who we are and what we stand for so that we can be sure to steer ourselves to positive destinations!



I am also planning on giving away tickets to students who demonstrate their positive character traits on their ships.  Once students have saved 20 tickets, they can get a treat from my "store".  I have been inspired by the scratch off and QR code tickets at Head Over Heels for Teaching so maybe I will see how I can incorporate them too!





Since we are working on focusing the students on their words and deeds, I'm going to connect Random Acts of Kindness to the students being able to get their "ships" to their destinations.  

So I made these cards that list various acts of kindness that students will be asked to do instead of saying or doing the not-so-nice things they have been trying to get away with.  I also hope this sparks some motivation to do positive things in general!

I hope you found some ideas to boost social emotional learning in your classroom!


Thanks for stopping by!