Guidance Curriculum in the elementary School
The Elementary School Counselor visits each classroom across all grade levels to deliver a comprehensive set of guidance lessons addressing the social and emotional health and safety of all students. The following areas are regular themes or strands of lessons taught during the school year.
Social, Emotional, and Ethical (SEE) Learning
Social, Emotional, and Ethical Learning (SEE Learning) is a universal, science-based approach to the ethical development of the whole child. It enhances traditional Social Emotional Learning (SEL) with key trainings in attention, compassion and ethical discernment, systems thinking and resilience.
SEE Learning was developed at Emory University for international use with the vision of “a compassionate and ethical world for all.” It was launched globally in the Spring of 2019 as the culmination of an academic collaboration that began in 1998 between Emory University and the Dalai Lama, who has long called for an education of heart and mind. ASB adopted the resulting model as an overarching framework for SEL across the school.
In the elementary school lessons are delivered by the counselors during weekly guidance classes in grades 1-5 and reinforced by teachers during morning meetings and classroom lessons.
The curriculum sequence includes:
Click for more information on SEE Learning and if you wish, begin your own journey through the online training modules.
Second Step Social Emotional Learning
Second Step is a research-based multimedia curriculum endorsed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). Schoolwide implementation has shown student growth in emotion management, situational awareness, and academic achievement. These lessons are taught by the counselor in grades PreK through 5, with grade 1-5 lessons integrated with the SEE Learning themes.
The lessons include puppets for lower elementary along with games, stories, activities, songs and videos for lower and upper elementary. Lessons teach explicit skills for learning, making friends, managing emotions like anger and anxiety, solving problems, and handling situations like peer pressure.
Click for more information on the Second Step Programs and how to reinforce these important skills at home.
Kelso's Choice Conflict Management
This conflict-management curriculum is based on the premise that every child is capable of becoming a peacemaker and thus teaches students to solve conflicts using skills that will benefit them for a lifetime. Designed around "Kelso the Frog" for grades KG through 3 and "KC's Wheel" for grades 4 and 5, this program offers nine options students can choose from to resolve minor conflicts on their own. Students learn to determine the difference between small or minor problems they can handle and big or serious problems that require an adult’s help. The Kelso's Choice program has been proven effective through evaluative research conducted at schools across North America and is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a "best practice" program for character education in "blue ribbon" schools. Visit this parent education page for more in-depth information on this model.
Health and Personal Safety
We use the Second Step Child Protection Units to teach important personal safety skills. These lessons are taught in each grade level from PreK through grade 5, to build on the following themes:
Lower Elementary Themes
Upper Elementary Themes
Handouts are sent home each week during the Second Step units to guide families in discussing these topics at home. The home handouts include a school code to register online and access a toolbox of videos and articles to educate yourself and talk with your child about the ways to stay safe. Contact me if you need the registration code at any time.
Social Skills Training
Social skills include the ability to perceive social cues, control emotional reactions, organize thinking around choices and consequences, and produce socially acceptable behaviors that build positive relationships. We use the evidence-based"Stop, Think, Do" lessons which have been positively evaluated by social scientists in Australia and England. The lessons are organized around teaching social skills along with supportive underlying beliefs and values, such as respecting differences in ourselves and others. Students in all grade levels may be taught these skills through friendship lessons delivered in the classroom or through small friendship groups that meet separately with the counselor.
Friendship groups are for students who need some extra encouragement and practice with these skills, and generally run for 6 weeks with 6-8 students per group. The students may be identified by the teacher, counselor or parents. Parents will be notified if we would like to invite their child to join a friendship group..
Social, Emotional, and Ethical (SEE) Learning
Social, Emotional, and Ethical Learning (SEE Learning) is a universal, science-based approach to the ethical development of the whole child. It enhances traditional Social Emotional Learning (SEL) with key trainings in attention, compassion and ethical discernment, systems thinking and resilience.
SEE Learning was developed at Emory University for international use with the vision of “a compassionate and ethical world for all.” It was launched globally in the Spring of 2019 as the culmination of an academic collaboration that began in 1998 between Emory University and the Dalai Lama, who has long called for an education of heart and mind. ASB adopted the resulting model as an overarching framework for SEL across the school.
In the elementary school lessons are delivered by the counselors during weekly guidance classes in grades 1-5 and reinforced by teachers during morning meetings and classroom lessons.
The curriculum sequence includes:
- Creating a Compassionate Classroom
- Resilience
- Strengthening Attention and Self-Awareness
- Navigating Emotions
- Learning About and From One Another
- Compassion for Self and Others
- We’re All in This Together
Click for more information on SEE Learning and if you wish, begin your own journey through the online training modules.
Second Step Social Emotional Learning
Second Step is a research-based multimedia curriculum endorsed by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL). Schoolwide implementation has shown student growth in emotion management, situational awareness, and academic achievement. These lessons are taught by the counselor in grades PreK through 5, with grade 1-5 lessons integrated with the SEE Learning themes.
The lessons include puppets for lower elementary along with games, stories, activities, songs and videos for lower and upper elementary. Lessons teach explicit skills for learning, making friends, managing emotions like anger and anxiety, solving problems, and handling situations like peer pressure.
Click for more information on the Second Step Programs and how to reinforce these important skills at home.
Kelso's Choice Conflict Management
This conflict-management curriculum is based on the premise that every child is capable of becoming a peacemaker and thus teaches students to solve conflicts using skills that will benefit them for a lifetime. Designed around "Kelso the Frog" for grades KG through 3 and "KC's Wheel" for grades 4 and 5, this program offers nine options students can choose from to resolve minor conflicts on their own. Students learn to determine the difference between small or minor problems they can handle and big or serious problems that require an adult’s help. The Kelso's Choice program has been proven effective through evaluative research conducted at schools across North America and is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as a "best practice" program for character education in "blue ribbon" schools. Visit this parent education page for more in-depth information on this model.
Health and Personal Safety
We use the Second Step Child Protection Units to teach important personal safety skills. These lessons are taught in each grade level from PreK through grade 5, to build on the following themes:
Lower Elementary Themes
- Personal Safety. We talk about important safety rules, such as safety with weapons, sharp tools, fire, and riding in cars. They also learn helpful ways to decide if something is safe or not.
- Touching Safety. Students learn about safe, unsafe, and unwanted touches, and rules about touching private body parts. They also learn to say no to unsafe or unwanted touches, and to tell an adult if someone breaks the rule about touching private body parts.
- Assertiveness. These lessons give students a chance to practice asking an adult for help, telling an adult about an unsafe situation, and being assertive to get out of unsafe situations.
Upper Elementary Themes
- How to use the Ways to Stay Safe to recognize when something is unsafe, report anything unsafe to an adult, and refuse to participate
- How to always ask a parent or the person in charge first before going somewhere, doing something, or accepting something from someone
- How to recognize safe, unsafe, and unwanted touches, and how to use the Private Body Parts Rule to identify possible sexual abuse
Handouts are sent home each week during the Second Step units to guide families in discussing these topics at home. The home handouts include a school code to register online and access a toolbox of videos and articles to educate yourself and talk with your child about the ways to stay safe. Contact me if you need the registration code at any time.
Social Skills Training
Social skills include the ability to perceive social cues, control emotional reactions, organize thinking around choices and consequences, and produce socially acceptable behaviors that build positive relationships. We use the evidence-based"Stop, Think, Do" lessons which have been positively evaluated by social scientists in Australia and England. The lessons are organized around teaching social skills along with supportive underlying beliefs and values, such as respecting differences in ourselves and others. Students in all grade levels may be taught these skills through friendship lessons delivered in the classroom or through small friendship groups that meet separately with the counselor.
Friendship groups are for students who need some extra encouragement and practice with these skills, and generally run for 6 weeks with 6-8 students per group. The students may be identified by the teacher, counselor or parents. Parents will be notified if we would like to invite their child to join a friendship group..
Mindfulness Training
A growing movement in health, school and corporate settings, mindfulness practice is about learning to pay attention to our experiences, in the present moment, with open-minded curiosity, kindness and acceptance. From that place, we can choose a skillful response to stimuli rather than reacting, or operating in auto-pilot mode.
As a rigorously researched strategy for reducing anxiety, stress and depression, mindfulness training benefits adults and children alike to improve learning, enhance performance and increase health and wellbeing. Mindfulness practice has been shown to profoundly alter the structure and function of the brain to improve the quality of thoughts and feelings, concern for others, and the ability to focus and concentrate.
As certified partners with the Mindfulness in Schools Project, we deliver the "paws .b" training in grades 2 and 4. This is a multi-media, experiential training that has been intentionally designed by educators and experienced mindfulness practitioners and evaluated positively by neuroscientists at leading universities in England and Wales .
Transition Support
Being an international school with a multi-cultural and transient population, we very intentionally support all of our students in successfully managing change and transition. Change is a process with normal stages that all people go through and there are strategies and understandings to manage it effectively. Even children who stay at ASB for many years, or perhaps their entire school career, will experience change as new friends arrive and old friends leave. We talk with all students about the cycle of transition, coping with change, what it means to be a "third culture kid" and how to leave well or stay well.
For arriving and departing students in grades 1-5, each are invited to a transition lunch with the counselor and a group of other new or departing students to talk about issues that arise with being new or preparing to depart. In the classroom, students are given a personalized farewell book and a farewell circle.
Our Student Ambassador Program is for students who have been at the school for 3 years or more, and have seen a lot of friends come and go. These students meet with the counselor for support and training then serve as welcoming ambassadors at the new student orientation. They also provide buddy support for students who arrive during the school year.
Visit our Links to Resources page for more information on Third Culture Kids and family support for transitioning between cultures.
A growing movement in health, school and corporate settings, mindfulness practice is about learning to pay attention to our experiences, in the present moment, with open-minded curiosity, kindness and acceptance. From that place, we can choose a skillful response to stimuli rather than reacting, or operating in auto-pilot mode.
As a rigorously researched strategy for reducing anxiety, stress and depression, mindfulness training benefits adults and children alike to improve learning, enhance performance and increase health and wellbeing. Mindfulness practice has been shown to profoundly alter the structure and function of the brain to improve the quality of thoughts and feelings, concern for others, and the ability to focus and concentrate.
As certified partners with the Mindfulness in Schools Project, we deliver the "paws .b" training in grades 2 and 4. This is a multi-media, experiential training that has been intentionally designed by educators and experienced mindfulness practitioners and evaluated positively by neuroscientists at leading universities in England and Wales .
Transition Support
Being an international school with a multi-cultural and transient population, we very intentionally support all of our students in successfully managing change and transition. Change is a process with normal stages that all people go through and there are strategies and understandings to manage it effectively. Even children who stay at ASB for many years, or perhaps their entire school career, will experience change as new friends arrive and old friends leave. We talk with all students about the cycle of transition, coping with change, what it means to be a "third culture kid" and how to leave well or stay well.
For arriving and departing students in grades 1-5, each are invited to a transition lunch with the counselor and a group of other new or departing students to talk about issues that arise with being new or preparing to depart. In the classroom, students are given a personalized farewell book and a farewell circle.
Our Student Ambassador Program is for students who have been at the school for 3 years or more, and have seen a lot of friends come and go. These students meet with the counselor for support and training then serve as welcoming ambassadors at the new student orientation. They also provide buddy support for students who arrive during the school year.
Visit our Links to Resources page for more information on Third Culture Kids and family support for transitioning between cultures.