A student’s sense of belonging can come from connections with both peers and adults. This downloadable guide includes five strategies for building strong relationships with students and creating a positive school culture where everyone feels they belong.
This article explains 6 ways to use breathing for stress relief and mental wellness.
"Learning skills to support our mental health early in life can provide significant benefits to our physical, emotional, and social growth for life. For example, for children to choose calm in times of stress, they first need the opportunity to experience calm and practice arriving at a calm state.
All of the tools you find in this toolkit help cultivate calm, mental health, and overall well being. In this resource, learn 9 yoga and mindfulness practices for mental health that are suitable for a variety of settings and time frames: each tool may be as brief as 1 minute or expanded as needed.
Use the tools individually or all together to tailor your own experience, now and for the long term."
*Counting Breath
*Core Breath
*Yoga Poses at Desk
*Brain Break
*Relaxation
You will need to share your email to download the guide.
A smartphone App designed to help teens and youth to cope with anxiety - promoting a shift in thinking about anxiety.
Available for iPhone/iPad in the apple store:
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/mindshift/id634684825?mt=8
Available for android in google play store:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bstro.MindShift&hl=en
Be Good People is an incredible health and social emotional learning resource that follows 5 themes: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, Relationship Skills, and Responsible Decision Making.
Each section comes with more than 10 lessons or extension activities that help you address these themes with your students.
This resource has content for kindergarten through grade 12.
Made by Minnesota Educators
Educators at the St. Croix River Education District in rural Minnesota.
Sign up for a 45 minute virtual field trip, and follow it up with a classroom unit about human rights and being an upstander. The classroom unit includes an inquiry project.
Virtual Field Trip:
Students will learn how to be human rights upstanders by discovering the stories of people who used their personal strengths to take a stand to protect their rights and the rights of others, creating change.
Students will:
1. Learn to identify traits all upstanders possess and understand that each of us also possess these traits in our own unique way.
2. Experience exhibits and the inspiring Museum architecture as if they were at the Museum in person.
Interact with a Museum guide and ask questions to better understand how they can take action for positive change.
3. Engage in discussion, critical thinking and reflection on their role in the protection of their own rights and the rights of others.
Classroom Unit:
The Be an Upstander resource is a project-based learning unit designed to complement the “Be an
Upstander” school program. This resource targets students in middle years and encourages inquiry and
action on human rights issues. Students will examine the traits of human rights upstanders and follow
their example. By the end of the project, students will have had the opportunity to explore an issue they
are personally passionate about, share their knowledge and lead others toward action.
The Be an Upstander website is a digital student experience designed to support student learning as part
of a larger human rights themed, project-based learning unit. Students developing upstander projects
will engage in personal inquiry and action on human rights issues that matter to them. Students will learn
about the traits of human rights upstanders, be introduced to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
and examine their personal strengths. Following the example of the upstanders they learn about,
students will be challenged to take tangible steps to becoming human rights upstanders themselves.
If you need this resource in a different format for accessibility purposes, please contact
info@humanrights.ca.
Be an Upstander website: https://humanrights.ca/upstander/#/
Complementary teacher's guide https://humanrights.ca/upstander/#/teacher-guide
"The Compassion Project is a web-based learning platform focusing on social and emotional learning (SEL) strengths like compassion and empathy. It begins with a tutorial, which students can always access by clicking the help button in the upper left corner. Each lesson starts with a pre-quiz to assess what students already know. After that, a bright and colorful two-minute video with cartoon characters describes the topic for the lesson. Four characters (Tye, Brandon, Alex, and David) narrate the videos in story format. After the video plays, there are reflection questions in the format of a text messenger app that students can click to answer. Characters introduce the SEL skills by describing what the skill (e.g., compassion) looks, sounds, and feels like.
Each skill has three activity lessons. For compassion, students identify when someone needs help and learn how to act with kindness. For empathy, students "see" life through the perspective of different characters. For mindfulness, students practice a breathing technique. Teachers can then provide debriefing and offline extension activities.
The teacher dashboard allows instructors to manage students, add classes, and re-teach when needed. Quiz grades are automatically uploaded and students can access their score by hovering over each lesson." (Common Sense Media)
Sun West School Division: To access The Compassion Project: Upper Elementary, log into EVERFI through your clever account.
You can learn pretty much anything with these videos!
Science, History, Language Arts, & Study Skills, Games & More!
"This guide offers two different approaches to teaching Encanto:
1. Show a few specific clips, paired with discussion questions.
2. Show the entire film, paired with a more in-depth lesson plan (below) and handout.
Feel free to use either approach, or even combine the two into one lesson (or an entire unit) based around the movie. If you only have a single class period, it might be ideal to show just a few key clips mentioned below. If you decide to help students delve deeper into the topic, you might show the entire film and have more extensive discussions over multiple days. Of course, you could also use some combination of the two, adapting the lesson to best suit your class's needs."
This lesson and active viewing guide are aligned with CASEL 5 and you can help your students:
*develop interests and a sense of purpose
*show the courage to take initiative
*resist peer pressure
*resolve conflict
*show concern for others' feelings
*reflect on community
*identify solutions
Students have access to a number of courses in the area of:
*Social & Emotional Learning
*Financial Education
*Health & Wellness
*College & Career Readiness
*Early Learning
Sun West students - ask your teacher to add you to a course! Currently we access Everfi via the Clever portal. Leila Pullum (lpullum@everfi.com) is here to respond to student and teacher support questions, so please don’t hesitate to reach if you need help.
NEW courses are being added regularly.
ECE- K-3
Word Force
Healthier Me Jr
Compassion Project
Elementary/Middle 4-8
Vault
Healthier Me Middle School
Hockey Scholar Math & Science
Endeavour STEM Career Exploration
Ignition Digital Safety & Citizenship
Character Playbook
Venture Entrepreneurship
Mental Wellness Basics
High Schools 9-12
Mental Wellness Basics
Venture Entrepreneurship
AlcoholEdu
Prescription Drug Safety
Marketplaces
EVERFI Financial Literacy
Honour Code
This toolkit unpacks six specific, practical tools that can be used to share yoga and mindfulness with teens/adolescent students.
All six tools prioritize two important objectives:
- How to address common roadblocks that (seemingly) limit teens’ access to yoga and mindfulness, and
- How to liberate and affirm teens’ identities in yoga and mindfulness
Enter your email to download the toolkit.
"A family yoga practice can be a fun, dynamic way to enjoy moments together that turn into memories. Designed for families and groups of all ages, this 25-minute yoga practice features partner work and imaginative play while teaching the value of connectedness."
This is a year plan created using GAP resources that any teacher can take and use. This is intended for teachers new to teaching Grade Six, but can be used by any Grade Six teacher to offer ideas of what can be used to teach the content of the Grade Six curriculum.
Give your eyes a break with this audio-only Digital Wellness Break. Follow along as teacher Stephanie's voice guides you step-by-step through "Tense and Release," a mind-body-breath integration that's designed for children and effective for all ages.
TODAY’S MINDFUL MOVEMENT
🦦 TENSE AND RELEASE 🦦
“It’s the end of a very long day. Back-to-back-to-back meetings. You sign-off from work, gather your belongings, rush out the door... only to get stuck in traffic. Tension rises.
A busy lifestyle with no time to relax can lead to frustration, tension, and chronic stress.
Making time in our busy days to mindfully unwind can help. Tense and Release is one of our favorite relaxation exercises to do just this. By consciously tensing and releasing our bodies, we are able to tune out what is going on outside and tune in to what’s going on inside. And in tune, consciously let go of the tension and stress we carry.
This audio-only relaxation will allow you to return to a state of balance. Just hit 'play' and give your eyes a rest for the next four minutes.” (Yoga Ed.)
CoordiKids is happy to offer the series of downloadable tools for teachers: The How Do You Feel? Curriculum for teaching self-regulation to children.
How Do You Feel? is a curriculum designed for elementary school teachers. The kit is geared toward helping children ranging in ages from 4-12.
What’s Included: The How Do You Feel? Curriculum from CoordiKids
- The “How Do You Feel?” Chart
- 6 Lesson Plans
- Visual Aids
- Worksheets
- And more!
By clicking on the "Home" tab, you will also find:
- Home Course
- Preschool Course
- Classroom Brain Break Course
- Homeschool Brain Break Course
- Master Classes
- Starter Packs (Sensory Processing and Dyspraxia)
Ignition: Digital Wellness and Safety is a digital literacy curriculum designed to provide students with the information they need to safely and confidently navigate the digital world.
Through six digital responsibility lessons, students take practical steps to protect their privacy and safety online. Students will learn critical digital literacy skills including how to evaluate content for accuracy, perspective, and motive. Ignition's digital literacy curriculum helps students acknowledge the benefits of online communities and resources while guiding them to successfully navigate potential pitfalls in their digital lives.
Ignition is a #DigCitCommit approved resource.
Sun West School Division: Log in through your clever account.
The Children’s Health and Well-being Measure (ACHWM) is a tool that gives Indigenous communities and organizations an overview of the health and well-being of children and youth in their communities.
The measure offers insight into children's Spiritual, Emotional, Physical, and Mental wellness.
The survey is completed on a tablet that engages children and acts as a catalyst for honest conversation. The results are shared with each child or youth in a visual form on the Balance Chart.
Pixar's "Inside Out" is a movie that's all about feelings, and this makes it perfect for sparking discussions with kids about social and emotional learning. Since the central characters all embody a different emotion, students learn to see parts of themselves or their experiences in each character.
As we know, watching a movie can involve way more than just watching. Use the "Inside Out Movie Guide" (with lesson materials) to explore how joy and sadness can come together and make sense of the mess of our emotions.
(Grades 3–6)
***Sun West teachers can access the movie Inside Out using ACF Streaming.
Click here to access the printable version of this yearly plan.Made by a Saskatchewan grade 6 teacherKids Boost Immunity (KBI) provides dozens of classroom activities and teacher resources developed by health and education professionals.
Ages: 8+
Coping with stress is a skill we need to teach at school across a wide breadth of subjects.