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Building a caring and inclusive classroom begins with an understanding of where students are at not just academically, but emotionally. Many students today have been exposed to experiences that affect their ability to regulate their emotions. By teaching children positive behavior and self-regulation, teachers can help improve outcomes for all students and build a caring community. This lesson will introduce students to mindful activities and the use of gratitude journals.

In this lesson, the students learn to use their voice to say something to make the world a better place. This is an opportunity to demonstrate and feel the impact of kindness, inclusion, and listening on a caring community. Students learn from a community helper about the needs they observe in the community. They make and donate a "calming box" so the tool may help youth calm themselves. Use this at the beginning of the year to set a tone and learn skills of effective language that are good for all. 

Students organize and implement a school-based recycling plan based on a one-day lunchroom waste audit.

Adapt this one-period lesson plan for your grade level and follow it with a simple and powerful service project for Earth Day. The reflection brings learning and service impact together. 

We discuss the joy of giving, as well as various ways to give through doing kind acts for people in the community. We learn how #GivingTuesday is a day of giving that combines efforts with others around the world to make a big difference. Children follow their own interests to make someone smile and promote kindness as an instrument of change.

This lesson focuses on the meaning and benefits of gratitude. A book about a gratitude jar challenges us to brainstorm things they are grateful for right now. For their service project, participants 'deliver gratitude' to others in the school community by saying "thank you" and observing the reactions of the person they thanked, as well as how they feel. They will keep a gratitude jar and add to it each day; they may look at their entries on tough days. They may add to others' jars with kind words.

Embracing Neuro and Physical Diversity Toolkit

Every person has individual traits that make them unique and who they are. People with neurological or physical differences have often been seen as less capable or received services that separated them from others. Society is enriched when it embraces our differences as gifts and characteristics to understand and respect. Awareness can change attitudes, laws, and opportunities. Each young person has a voice, heart, and hands to take big and small actions to help us create a more inclusive world. 

Students learn about food choices as needs or wants. They read a book and discuss healthy choices. They discuss why is not always good to have everything you want. They discuss the foods we need to have healthy bodies and minds. Students create healthy food choice plates and share them to encourage healthy eating. Students may choose to share a healthy recipe to donate a cookbook or host a healthy food or recipe drive. 

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