In honor of National Bullying Prevention Month, we are giving away books that teach kids about friendship, social skills, and empathy. One lucky reader will win:
- Ease the Tease
- Make a Friend, Be a Friend
- I Don’t Want to Be Nice!
- I Like Being Me
- Weird!
- Zach Stands Up
- I Can Learn Social Skills!
- Turn Away from Teasing
To Enter: Leave a comment below describing how you help kids develop social skills and empathy.
For additional entries, leave a separate comment below for each of the following tasks you complete:
Each comment counts as a separate entry. Entries must be received by midnight, October 22, 2021.
The winner will be contacted via email on or around October 25, 2021, and will need to respond within 72 hours to claim their prize or another winner will be chosen. This giveaway is in no way affiliated with, administered, or endorsed by Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. Winner must be US resident, 18 years of age or older.
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© 2021 by Free Spirit Publishing. All rights reserved. The view expressed in this post represent the opinion of the author and not necessarily Free Spirit Publishing.
Puppets are great way for children to practice strategies that we are teaching them. They’re so fascinated with them and inviting for social interaction.
I go into classrooms once a week and teach them a lesson using the Second Step SEL curriculum. I also meet with students who need additional support in a small group using the Second Step Digitial SEL curriculum. It is time consuming going into every classroom, but the benefits are there for students when it’s used with fidelity.
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I am a Child & Family Support Worker in the Coastal Connections Program at Mission Australia. I work with families in a variety of ways & support individual issues & needs. I run parenting programs & work closely with families to encourage & support the social & emotional development of children.
At our Child Care program we help label our feelings and label theirs. We interact and play with our children, helping them see how to interact in appropriate ways.
I’m part of Mental Health Heroes group threw my community and work with Special Ed. ED kids and use every teaching moment i can, to help teach empathy and compaction to ours because no two people are exactly the same and we should celebrate our differences. the Song Humble and kind is my favorite.
I work with students with multiple disabilities. We discuss behavior choices and being kind on daily basis. This year the students chose how to behave (class motto and individual mottos) and made posters for reference. It has been successful so far because it is their words and choices, not mine. EX: When you enter this classroom, you are: kind, beautiful, team player, leader, helpful, etc.
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Part of our class pledge is to encourage others and respect everyone. We recite our pledge together each day and it becomes the rules we live by in our class each day.
I use teaching moments and books to teach social skills and talk about feelings.
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Elementary counseling is highly focused on helping students develop their social skills. Learning to work with others is a big emphasis and remediations often help support students when there’s a need. This month, our school is focusing on kindness and empathy. Teaching students to think about others is a big step to helping them think about their choices more. These books will help illustrate this concept to them even more!
I am a DHH School Counselor and work with children who are Deaf and Hard of Hearing.Due to their inability to hear at times they don’t always learn the social cues like their peers. It is important for my students to understand how to make friends and how to keep friends too. Social Stories and role-playing are important tools to teach SEL. Special needs students are 3X more likely to be bullied. They need to understand how to navigate situations when faced with “bullying”. It is through books and their characters that we can help support their mental health and teach them that they are not alone in their feelings and there are many positive ways to build relationships. Thank you for providing SEL books!
As an elementary school counselor, I teach weekly SEL lessons to K-5th grade. I begin the school year working on empathy, compassion and kindness as I feel that this sets the foundation to further social-emotional learning.
Myself and the Speech Path in my district co-facilitate a group with students on the spectrum that need to work on pragmatics and social skills. These books would be great for what we do with them!
I am a resource teacher, and work with students on behavioral issues as well as academic issues. I would use these books as a kid-friendly resource to help students examine and change their behaviors that are harmful to others.
I use social skills in my lunch bunches during my school day. It is nice to have a variety of books that explain a small problem on the playground and how one of the social skills can help solve it. Some of my students who are on the spectrum find it very helpful to be read a story and then discuss the social skill that helped them the most. The books help model good decision making skills so everyone can practice friendship skills. I need as many different resources as I can since some students I will support them all school year. What a great idea to celebrate Anti-Bullying Awareness and Prevention during the month of Oct.! It is so important! Pam Bleam- Professional School Counselor T-K-6th grades Manson Northwest Webster Elementary School Barnum, Iowa 50518
I am a Pre-K teacher in a class on my own! It can be hard to stop bullying in it’s track as the only teacher but we do a lot of talking and reading books during the morning circle time and do a lot of “fixing the mess we make with our words” by lending a helping hand and trying our best to put smiles back on our friends faces. My class loves reading and I think these would be a great addition to our library!
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I provided mandated counseling services to elementary school students. I try to make sessions fun by making them interactive and meaningful to the students.
I teach PreK special education. With so many more students coming to school without the ability to regulate their emotions, these books would be very helpful in teaching them self-regulation, empathy, and the importance of positive relationships.
I am a principal. At my school, all homeroom classes have SEL (Social Emotional Learning) Time daily. Teachers frequently read books which help tell stories of empathy and other social skills. They also teach the Zones of Regulation and other social emotional skills. During October our Students of the Week talk about Bullying Prevention month on each Monday Morning Show. This is shared with all the students in the school. They tell the difference between bullying and conflict and also share ideas of what to do if you are being bullied and how to help someone else who is being bullied.
As the Director of SPED and PPS, I’d like to preview these resources to determine if and how they may be best used across my buildings.
I am a prevention specialist and I teach social skills using Botvin’s Life Skills curriculum in a school where 100% of the students receive free lunch. On top of that I see students individually or in a small group setting at the school and we discuss/practice skills that will help them become successful adults like empathy, decision making skills social skills, etc.
I am an elementary special education teacher and I oversee kiddos that have focus, confidence, self-regulation, and empathy challenges. I teach a small social emotional group everyday and friends in my group have either been the bully or are experiencing bullying in other parts of their lives. I am always on the lookout for books that address these challenges and would love to add these to my collection. We do a lot of role playing and these would be perfect!
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Liked on Facebook 🙂 Great books for helping kids understand life!
I belong to the Fairbanks Coalition Builders, we are helping our district become more familiar with Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion. We’re starting with our school staff and community members, and hope to be able to reach students directly in the coming months
I do parent workshop on how parents can help their children with social emotional skills. Bullying awareness needs to start at a young age to help student build resiliency against bullying. Also students need help with expressing empathy to other children.
I am a first year Physical Education Teacher. I teach gym and health to k-8th graders who have special needs in D75. I explain and demonstrate to all my students how important it is to work well with others and develop relationships with one another. In order to work with other people, one has to develop social skills which can lead to friendships. During the lessons, we discuss how important it is to have empathy, qualities of unhealthy and healthy relationships, benefits of a healthy relationship, companionship, teamwork, etc. These books will support my lessons through stories and visuals, especially since my students use visual aids to learn. Most of my students are diagnosed with emotional disturbance so building social skills and empathy are ongoing skills that has to be continuously taught through repetition and routine. During gym, they demonstrate the skills taught through teamwork, drills, and communication. My students are challenged when I give them team building tasks that are interdependent on other players and when they play each other in various sports such as basketball, flag football, soccer, and track.
I am a social worker and try to weave in empathy to everything I do. We look at things as a chain reaction trying to influence the world beyond ourselves.
I teach young preschoolers how to show emotions through pictures of real kids like them expressing different feelings. I also help them solve their own problem by offering a solution kit with ways to solve their problems. I also use conflict resolutions to help them in turn they help each other.
As an elementary counselor, teaching social skills has always been a very integral part of my curriculum. I incorporate a lot of bibliotherapy in my guidance lessons, that initiate discussion with my students. One of my favorite new resources I purchased last year was a book from Marco-Empathy is Elementary. My fourth grade students enjoy learning the character trait of empathy through a play format.
I am the SEL instructor for the POWER college and career prep program. As the SEL instructor and case manager provide SEL lessons along with ice breakers and mindfulness activities weekly for middle and high school students. Bullying is one of the topic I discuss and give creative activities that allow students to be aware and practice during school and home. These books will be a great supplement to curriculum I currently use
Community Service Agency Head Start and Early Head Start is:
A federally funded early childhood program providing children of low-income families with a comprehensive program to meet their educational, emotional, social, health, nutritional, and psychological needs. We enroll children with disabilities and provide special education services through NEIS, Child Find, family counseling and play therap. All children in our program get meals provided and are we also provide any items needed to attend the program such as diapers, wipes and formula. In additional to working with the children, we provide support and resources to families such as, parenting classes, nutrition classes, GED Classes, housing assistance, workforce development, etc., Feel free to contact Maria Trujillo at mtrujillo@csareno.org or (775) 786-6023 ext:1047 for any questions or go on to our website at http://www.csareo.org
Thank You,
Maria Trujillo
Mental Health and Disabilities Coordinator
We are currently in a bullying situation in our after school program. The older boys are teasing and targeting a younger boy with special needs. We intervene when we can to set things straight, validate the feelings of the “victim” and use the event as an opportunity to teach. We try to emphasize the need to be kind and helpful when we are in a group and build a sense of community. I have pulled some picture books that emphasize character education and empathy but we could certainly use more to add to our toolkit. This would be a wonderful opportunity to acquire them.
I would love to read the books to the different classes in our Headstart Center. The children need to be “taught” how to be friend because many of them were isolated during COVID and weren’t able to play with friends in their neighborhoods or even relatives. It is so important that we teach them how to be a friend and not bully because those are skills that will help them throughout the rest of their life.
Bibliotherapy-address bully report submissions at my school from students to strategize more empathetic responses and skills to speak up against unkind treatment of others.
I love to turn movies into learning lessons. In most movies, the main character always faces a challenge and have to deal with strong emotions. I always ask my children, “how would you feel if you were going through those challenges and emotions. Is there anything you would do in his/her place or anything you could do to help.” My children are very empathic .
By teaching “Being in the Moment” and by teaching ” Taking a step in their shoes”
As an elementary school counselor, I get to focus heavily on social skills and empathy. In our empathy unit we read books that have relatable social situations and talk through how characters are feeling. We also discuss how others’ actions and inactions impact the characters. We tie in how helping others brings us comfortable feelings, while also honoring our own emotional safety and security.
I work with our school counselor to teach our SEL curriculum. We often use hand puppets to roleplay a conflict for the younger students then model calming down and problem-solving steps.
We talk about empathy.
Pinerest posts have great resources!
I teach empathy and social skills with lots of modelling, lots of positives, helping kids see their own strengths, using soft eyes when there are problems and staying quiet and patient when kids are feeling disregulated. There are tons of lessons to teach about these things but my presence, unconditional positive regard, my relationships with students and sharing my calm are the best teachers.
Lots of great material on Twitter!
I use books and activities gleaned from Free Spirit publications to support the Guidance lessons in my school. Colstrip Public Schools uses standards for social skills developed by the American Foundation of School Counselors.
I help help kids develop social skills and empathy by reading books to them and doing classroom lessons.
I think for me, serving students that are on the spectrum, but non-verbal is all about communication. You think that non-verbal have difficulties communicating and understanding empathy, but I believe it is more the educator that needs to understand the student’s individual systems. I believe it is society that does not understand how they are communicating with us, so we need to learn to figure out how they are engaging communication in their language.
Skippy, my dog and I work together with children/groups of children talking about bullying and the impact on their lives. We’d be extremely excited to receive these books to use along with our continuing message about the spread of bullying dangers.
Great posts on Facebook! Very helpful!
Empathy is a way to connect. It shows children that you know they are experiencing something, even if you are not sure how they feel. Empathy is saying: “I want you to know that you are not alone, and that I want to understand how you feel.”
Empathy is made up of four main components.
Consider the other’s point of view. Put your feelings and reactions aside so that you can see the situation through your student’s eyes.
Ask yourself: Do I think my student is trying?
Do not pass judgment. Don’t be too quick to jump to conclusions about what is happening to your student or child.
Ask yourself: What else do I need to know about what’s going on?
Understand your child’s feelings. Build on your own experiences to understand what your child is feeling. Remember when you felt the same way. (Be careful not to overdo it. Everyone’s experiences are unique).
Ask yourself: What else do I need to know about what my child is seeing or reacting to?
Communicate that he understands. Allow your child to express her feelings without using phrases to “fix” the situation such as: “What you need to do is…”. Instead, use reflective phrases such as: “It seems like you…” or “I heard that you…”.
I am a counselor at a private school and I teach all my students PK-8th Social Emotional Skills. I love to teach this by reading books, role playing and playing games. I do a check in every class and we practice some fun breathing exercises!
to help develop empathy I use story books and we talk about the different characters and how we could put ourselves in “their shoes”. 🙂
Working with students in the special education program gives me a chance to offer students ways to stop bullying and to prevent themselves from bullying. We talk about how they should handle bullying if it is being done to them and how they can avoid imitating others who bully. The books you listed sound like they would definitely be great resource material!
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I partner with the Domestic Violence Community to provide awareness in our community. I also co-ordinate with our school and teen plus students to provide information, resources and needed toiletries and items to our local shelter. As a survivor myself, public speaker and writer , I am available to assist in any way I can.
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I am responsible for weekly group contact with each grade level to present social emotional lessons; within these lessons we do cover topics such as empathy, bullying and how it harms others and other topics such as responsibility etc. I encourage them to put themselves in others shoes and think twice before being mean or ill spirited towards their classmates and peers.
As a school counselor there many lessons K-4 given to students to recognize and practice these skills. Throughout the year these themes and skills are revisited and discussed so that students are improving their social emotional learning.
I help students from kinder to sixth grade and these books would be a great tool to help the students I work with.
As a school counselor, I help my students develop social skills and empathy by teaching classroom lessons on these topics. I use videos, books, and activities along with discussion to introduce these concepts and reinforce learning.
I teach all our 550 students the meaning of empathy which I then apply to an art lesson. Also, we are currently making Anti-Bully Posters school-wide that we’ll use during a walkathon/peaceful demonstration to show the world how we feel about bullies and bullying at our school. In addition, I create a 7’x4′ KINDNESS ZONE which all the students sign during our walkathon.
As a gifted intervention specialist, teaching empathy and helping students with social/emotional needs is a top priority. Lessons on SEL are embedded in our morning routine.
As a school counselor, I work with students individually and in groups to help them take ownership over their thoughts and behaviors. We talk situations out and put ourselves in others’ shoes. Through our work together, they learn that they are in control of themselves and what they do with that control makes or breaks situations. I work to empower them and to make good decisions that improve their lives and the lives of others.
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Through teaching social skills lessons and modeling expectations in the classroom.
SEL lessons in the classroom and modeling and discussion at home!
modelling
As a school psychologist I work with children daily to develop social emotional skills. My work includes individual sessions, groups, and classroom lessons. I work with our district leadership to ensure that we are creating supportive learning environments that foster growth for the whole child.
I lead a weekly story time with young children and we talk about behaviors and feelings of characters in the stories we read, and how they feel in similar situations. Pretty standard fare.
I like to play friendship UNO with my students. They have fun and learn important social skills all at the same time.
We present daily mini-lessons on a variety of SEL topics at the start of the day.
We discuss different situations that happen in our classroom or at school and decide how they could have been handled in a kinder way. The students know that in our classroom there are no put downs. We also do not laugh or make fun of students who are doing their best. We talk about the Growth Mindset and act out and discuss what different phrases mean. This has been a big help to all of the students. I have a bulletin board up in my room with different phrases we can use when we are feeling different ways. This year our goal is kindness. All of the students have a sheet of different kindness activities they can do or say to others. We discuss their choices and then see if we can come up with more ways to be kind.
I help the children in my Family Childcare and the church Nursery develop social skills and empathy by modeling both readind books and doing good deeds and praising them when I see them using their skills and throughout the day.
I plan to read it to the children I teach 3-5 years old and role play with them for each book after I have read it to them. I will also encourage each child to read it to everyone in their own words by describing what they see on each page.
Role Playing is key to developing social skills and empathy. Kids need to know what others go through and they need to learn to express kindness and empathy.
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I am always touched by how thoughtful and compassionate kids are when something happens to a character in a story. We use these books as a non-threatening, but powerful way of helping students connect to their own interactions day-to-day.
Thank you for providing such a wonderful wealth of resources to be used in the classroom.
I do this through teachable moments as well as reading books where kids are showing empathy and using appropriate social skills.
As a School Counselor, I am facilitating Classroom Counseling Lessons for 28 classrooms within Kindergarten, First Grade, Second Grade. Students are learning empathy, manners, social skills, problem-solving skills through a PATHS SEL curriculum and Kelso’s Choices Problem-Solving Program. I meet with all of these classrooms every week to provide counseling lessons on these topics.
I help kids develop social skills and empathy by modelling, using evidence based materials and books!
I teach in a multi-age classroom of grades 2,3,4. These books would be very beneficial for my students. We work on social emotional learning skills everyday!
I teach Jr. High Health and we go through a whole unit on Bullying Prevention. We discuss the different types of bullying, why people bully and how to help someone who is being bullied. Students also learn social skills by learning about the different ways to communicate. They are taught how to be more assertive.
I ask the kids to stop and take 3 deep breaths. Then I ask them to think before they say anything else. Then I ask them is it necessary. Is what they were going to say going to be helpful, and would they want someone to say that to them,
I help kids develop social skills and empathy by checking in with them frequently and teaching engaging lessons.
I directly teach empathy and social skills like conflict management, anger management, bullying prevention, active listening skills, etc. in classroom lessons with all classes throughout the school. I plan schoolwide events that showcase kindness, diversity, and inclusion.
I try to develop social skills in my students by providing the opportunity for different situations and scenarios for them to think about their responses to others and how they would handle themselves at those times. They love to role play and present different responses. Many situations that students are faced with are reactionary instead of thought provoking and these role playing activities provide practice.
I will use these in my Special Education class to have conversations about bullying they have experienced.