Life Skills Learning

Students learn how to develop a growth mindset and apply it to the task of paying attention.

• Summary:  In this week’s lesson, your child will learn that paying attention means watching, listening, and thinking carefully about something. They practice different ways of showing they’re paying attention.

• Try This at Home:  Ask your child to show you how they can pay attention, for example, when you are reading a story with them or explaining how to do something.

Imagine Neighborhood:  Listen with your child to the Imagine Neighborhood podcast, Season 2, Episode 3: Shake Your Monkeys

Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn two important reasons for paying attention: to learn and to stay safe.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child why they think it’s important to pay attention during different activities, for example, when listening to information or instructions, when helping out with a task, or when crossing the street with you.

• ​​​​​​​

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn that mistakes are a natural part of the learning process. They’ll practice encouraging their classmates (and themselves) while the class learns and practices a skill together: snapping their fingers.

• Try This at Home: Remind your child that everyone makes mistakes and that mistakes help us learn. Point out when you make mistakes or tell them a story about a time you learned something from making a mistake.

• Imagine Neighborhood: Listen with your child to the Imagine Neighborhood podcast, Season 2, Episode 2: Macho and the Toucan’t.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn that it’s important to practice and keep trying in order to get better at something they want to learn.

• Try This at Home: Encourage your child to choose something they want to get better at (such as, tying their shoes, adding or subtracting, writing their name, dribbling a ball, or snapping their fingers). Set aside a few minutes each day for them to practice the skill, and highlight the progress they’re making.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will show what they’ve learned about paying attention, managing distractions, and practicing as they learn to draw Pepito, a character from Second Step Elementary animated videos.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child to tell you about their experience learning to draw Pepito. Encourage them to draw a family portrait with Pepito in it as a way to keep practicing.

Students learn how to develop a growth mindset and apply it to the task of paying attention.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn that paying attention can look different depending on the situation, for example, listening to the teacher during a lesson, or looking both ways before crossing the street.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child to show you how they can pay attention, for example, when you are reading a story with them, explaining a task, or crossing the street.

Imagine Neighborhood: Listen with your child to the Imagine Neighborhood podcast, Season 2, Episode 3: Shake Your Monkeys.

• Summary:In this week’s lesson, your child will learn that a distraction is something that takes their attention away from something else. They’ll learn different ways to manage distractions, such as reminding themselves to focus, turning away from the distraction, changing places, or politely asking someone to stop a distracting behavior.

• Try This at Home: When you need to pay attention or focus on a task at home, ask your child to suggest some ways you can manage distractions.

• Imagine Neighborhood:Listen with your child to the Imagine Neighborhood podcast, Season 1, Episode 7: Macho’s New Spaceship.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will reflect on different skills they’ve learned and talk about how practice and continued effort helped them get better.

• Try This at Home:Talk with your child about different tasks and skills they have learned to do by themselves at home, for example, making their bed, getting themselves dressed, etc. Remind them that it took time and practice to get better at these things.

• Imagine Neighborhood: Listen with your child to the Imagine Neighborhood podcast, Season 2, Episode 2: Macho and the Toucan’t.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will practice using helpful thoughts to encourage themselves and keep going while learning a dance with their classmates.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child to suggest some helpful thoughts to encourage you or another family member to complete a challenging task (for example, a school/home/work project, or an exercise routine).

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will show what they’ve learned about paying attention, managing distractions, and practicing as they learn to draw Pepito, a character from Second Step Elementary animated videos.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child to tell you about their experience learning to draw Pepito. Encourage them to draw a family portrait with Pepito in it as a way to keep practicing.

Students learn how to develop a growth mindset and use helpful thoughts to persevere through challenges.

• Summary:  In this week’s lesson, your child will learn that their best skills have developed as a result of practicing, trying hard, and asking for help.

• Try This at Home:  Ask your child to share with you what they’re good at and how they became good at it. Share with them something you’re good at and what you did to practice and try hard, and who you asked for help.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn that mistakes tell us something’s not working and that they can respond to mistakes by asking for help, trying again, or making a small change to keep going.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child what a mistake tells them and what they can do to keep going after a mistake.

• Imagine Neighborhood: Listen with your child to the Imagine Neighborhood podcast, Season 1, Episode 3: Macho Supreme Has an Accident.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn that helpful thoughts can help us keep going when we’re learning and unhelpful thoughts might make us want to give up.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child whether the thoughts they have when they’re learning something new are helpful or unhelpful. Ask your child to share examples of helpful thoughts they know.

• Imagine Neighborhood: Listen with your child to the Imagine Neighborhood podcast, Season 2, Episode 2: Macho and the Toucan’t.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how to replace an unhelpful thought with a helpful thought so they can keep going when learning feels hard.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child how they might change an unhelpful thought into a helpful thought. Encourage them by using helpful thoughts at home.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will use what they’ve learned from the unit to give advice to someone who is struggling to learn something new.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child what advice they would give you if you were having a hard time learning something new.

Students learn how to develop a growth mindset and make an effective plan for how to get better at a skill.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn that every time they practice a new  skill, the brain gets better at sending the messages for that skill.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child to explain what happens in their brain when they practice.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn that if they’re practicing a skill but not getting better, they can try a new way of practicing or find someone to learn from.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child to tell you something new they’ve been practicing at school. Ask if they can think of other ways to practice or someone they could learn from.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will work with a partner to make a practice plan that includes what they want to learn, how they will practice, and what they can do if they aren’t improving.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child to tell you what a practice plan includes.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will make their own practice plan.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child to share their practice plan with you. If they brought it home, find a place to display it where they’ll see it every day. Check in to see how their plan is going, and support them if they need help adjusting their plans.

Students learn how to develop a growth mindset and apply strategies to make effective plans to reach goals.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child’s class will work together to set a 2-week goal that’s specific, challenging, and doable.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child to describe their class goal and explain what makes it challenging and doable for their class. Tell your child about a goal you recently set and what makes it challenging and doable for you.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child’s class will work together to make a good plan to reach their 2-week goal.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child to describe their plan to reach their class goal. What will they do? What will they need? Who can support them? Tell your child about a time when you made a plan to reach a goal.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child’s class will work together to identify roadblocks that might be getting in the way as they work toward their 2-week goal. Then they’ll decide what they can change to remove or get around their roadblocks.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child if they’ve run into any roadblocks while working toward their class goal. If so, how will they work around them? Tell your child about a time you ran into a roadblock and what you did to overcome it.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child’s class will reflect on their journey of working toward their 2-week goal.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child about their experience with setting a class goal and working toward it. What worked? What didn’t work? What could they do next time? Reflect on a goal you’ve worked toward and what you learned.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will practice the full goal-setting process as they work toward a 10-minute goal with a group.

• Try This at Home: Work with your child to make a list of 1-week goals you could set as a family. Choose one and make sure it’s specific, challenging, and doable. Follow the goal-setting process to make a plan, check in on how it’s going, and at the end of the week, reflect on how it went and what you could do next time.

Students learn how to develop a growth mindset and to plan, modify, and achieve goals.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how to set a goal that's right for them. A goal that's right for someone is specific, challenging, doable, and motivating.

• Try This at Home:Ask your child what their goal is and how they know it’s right for them. Encourage them to describe why it’s motivating to them. Talk to your child about a goal you reached in the past and why you chose that goal.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how to make an effective plan to reach a goal.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child about their plan to reach their goal. What will they do? What will they need? Talk to them about how you can support them as they work toward their goal.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how to evaluate their progress toward a goal and change their plan accordingly.

• Try This at Home: Talk to your child about the progress they’ve made toward their goal. Ask them if they’ve run into any roadblocks, and offer to help them think about how to keep moving forward.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how to reflect on their experience working toward a goal.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child to tell you about their goal-setting journey, including what worked, what didn’t work, and what they could do next time. Tell your child about a goal that you set and worked toward. What worked, what didn’t work, and what did you learn?

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will apply the full goal-setting process they learned in this unit to work toward a 10-minute goal of their choice.

• Try This at Home: Ask your child about the goal-setting process they learned in this unit and why it’s important. Encourage them to set a new short-term goal that's right for them and to follow the process they learned. Check in along the way to see how it’s going.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will brainstorm different strategies they can try when they’re having trouble learning something new.

• Question: Tell your child about a time you needed to change your approach in order to learn something new. Ask your child to tell you about something they’re working hard to learn and how you can help.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how to identify and set achievable goals by making them specific.

• Question: Ask your child to tell you about a specific goal they’re interested in working toward and what makes it specific.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will practice breaking big goals down into smaller, short-term goals.

• Question: Think of a time you achieved a big goal, such as learning to drive or graduating from school. Tell your child about your goal and the series of smaller steps you needed to take to achieve it. Ask your child to tell you about a goal they have.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will bring it all together and create an action plan to help them accomplish one of the goals they chose at the beginning of the unit.

• Question: Ask your child what their goal is, how they broke it down into smaller goals, and their plans for achieving it. Discuss how you can support them if things at home or in school slow them down or stand in their way and about how you can celebrate when they achieve their goal.

• Summary: In this week’s lesson, your child will learn strategies for how to stay on track toward their goals. They’ll learn how to monitor their own progress, decide if they need to try new strategies, and determine when their goal is complete.

• Question: Ask your child about a goal they’re actively working toward. Ask them if they are encountering any roadblocks and how you can help them determine the next steps forward.