This best practice guide will highlight the steps to implement Life Skills GO to track student wellbeing throughout the day and school year, provide guided digital and physical lessons to improve student skills in their ability to identify, understand and manage their emotions, and measure progress across each student, classroom and an entire school.
Step 1: Create the habit of identifying emotions through out the day
- Why: Learning to identify and express feelings in a positive way helps students develop the skills they need to manage them effectively.
- How: Use the Life Skills GO Weather Report Roll Call function when students come into the classroom to answer how they are feeling.
- What: Using the Life Skills GO Weather Report will track the changing emotions each student experiences, allowing the teacher to understand which students might need additional support.
Step 2: Timetable the digital and physical lessons at least 1x a week
- Why: Consistency is key to learning, practising and embedding these emotional wellbeing skills.
- How: Set up the Weather Report Unit as a Whole School Unit, so all classes have access to the lessons. Set the dates for each lesson to begin, for example - setup 8 weeks, 1 lesson a week on a Wednesday and ensure the dates are setup properly to allow access for the students.
Click on Physical Lessons from the sidebar menu under Classroom Resources to select the Weather Report Physical Lessons to print the activities or display on your classroom smart board for the class to follow along.
- What: In the Weather Report Unit, alternate between using the 20-minute digital lesson to using the physical and interactive printable games and activities to help the students find different ways to learn the concepts of identifying, understanding and managing their emotions.
Step 3: Review the Class Weather Report History and Class Graph
- Why: Tracking how students are feeling throughout the day can help teachers recognise which students are ready to learn and which students may need more support.
- How: Click on the Weather Report Button in the Dashboard and scroll down to review the Class Weather Report History, The Class Graph, and individual student graphs to identify whether students are ready to learn or in a heightened state of emotion or not quite ready to learn.
- What: We suggest teachers use the Weather Report roll call function throughout the day. Checking the Weather Report History throughout the day will help teachers understand how their students are feeling as they come into the classroom, after playground time, and before they head home at the end of the day.
Step 4: Use the Quick Weather Report to address a heightened state of emotion
- Why: Some students or an entire class might be in a heightened state of emotion, and not quite ready to learn. Using the Quick Weather report will allow the student(s) to identify their emotion and Life Skills GO will provide an appropriate mindfulness video to watch to respond to the emotion selected.
- How: Click on the Weather Report Button in the Dashboard and then click on Quick Weather Report. Have the class or selected student choose the emotion they are feeling, the system will show a mindfulness video for them to watch, and then they select how they are feeling after watching the video. As an option, the teacher can assign the exercise to a specific student in the drop-down.
- What: We suggest teachers use the Quick Weather report to help individual students or the whole class as necessary, to reset the learning stage or to calm students and have a quick wellbeing check-in with a quick mindfulness moment tailored to their identified emotion.
Top tips
- Schedule each term with a focus on a specific wellbeing area and create a whole-school lesson unit to match your curriculum.
- Associate the digital and physical lesson (printable from the platform) to run during PDHPE time
- Monitor the Weather Report regularly to review how students are feeling and which students might need more support
- Administrators can review the progress of all classrooms completion of the digital lessons using the Executive Reporting function.
- Review your student absence rate and suspension rate through the school to track if the rate is decreasing with the consistent implementation of Life Skills GO.
- Award badges to your students to support their learning and progress. You can do this by clicking on Students in the Dashboard, selecting a student and clicking the badge button.
Check out our FREE 32-page resource: A Guide to Teaching Emotions, for a detailed 10 week guide to improving emotional literacy and whole school wellbeing.
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Want to learn more about how to implement these best practices in teaching your students to identify, understand and manage their emotions? Book a FREE wellbeing consultation with us today!