Recommended Preparations Before Delivering the Lessons

Our elementary lessons are inspired from the same guiding principles as our middle and high school lessons but adapted for younger students. These lessons were designed for kindergarten through second grade students with consideration of cognitive and emotional development.

For third through fifth grade students, scroll to the bottom of each lesson to find the upper elementary adaptation. Please also take some time to look at our 15 middle and high school lessons, as these can be adapted for third through fifth grade students as well. However, you should review the creative activities and videos in those lessons to ensure they are age-appropriate.

In addition, before teaching any of these lessons, please read the following carefully:

When you teach a lesson that invites students to connect with difficult emotions and challenging stories, it is important to be thoughtful and intentional about how you ask them to listen to one another. We recommend you keep the following preparations and considerations in mind:

Create Group Guidelines

Before teaching the lessons, and as much as it is age-appropriate depending on grade level, it is important to have an understanding between classmates for how they are going to listen to and respond to each other’s stories, and how to create an environment where students feel safe. This discussion may include:

Listening with empathy: Listening with empathy: Be respectful as students share, and agree not to interrupt a student’s story.
Maintaining privacy: Agree that, for the students, whatever is shared in the group must stay within the group. (Educators: Continue to follow your school district’s mandatory reporting procedures. These guidelines are for students).
Responding with Kindness: Create an encouraging and supportive environment and respond to each other with kindness rather than judgment or advice.

Review these guidelines each time you start the lessons, together as a group, and before you ask students to share. You may want to write these guidelines on a poster and display them for the duration of the curriculum.

Plan for Additional Support if Needed

When delivering a lesson that asks students to tell a difficult story from their lives, you may want to let the school counselor or social worker know ahead of time, so that students can visit with them afterwards if they need additional support. This is especially true for the lessons that ask students to drop into a more vulnerable place.

Think About Lesson Timing

When asking students to share a difficult story from their lives, we recommend that you do this at a time when you can check in with students the following day (not on a Friday or before a holiday or school break). It is also important to continue to follow-up with students who seem to need additional support.