Bennington Public Schools

This unit will be taught in the first semester.

Lesson 1: Starting Middle School

In this lesson, students will identify challenges they might face when starting middle school and identify resources in their school where they can get help.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about something that made you nervous when you started middle school. Ask what makes them nervous and who they can go to for help at school.

Lesson 2: How to Grow Your Brain

In this lesson, students will learn about the brain’s ability to grow and change when they practice challenging things. Having a growth mindset supports your child’s success in school and in life.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about a time you had to learn something new. Explain whether it was hard to learn and how you learned it. Ask your child if there’s anything they would like to learn to do this year.

Lesson 3: Trying New Strategies

In this lesson, students will brainstorm different strategies they can try when they’re having trouble learning something new.

You Can Try This at Home

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.

Lesson 4: Making Goals Specific

In this lesson, students will learn how to identify and set achievable goals by making them specific.

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

Lesson 5: Breaking Down Your Goals

In this lesson, students will practice breaking big goals down into smaller, short-term goals.

You Can Try This at Home

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.

Lesson 6: Monitoring Your Progress

In this lesson, students 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.

You Can Try This at Home

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.

Lesson 7: Bringing It All Together

In this lesson, students 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.

You Can Try This at Home

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

This unit will be taught in the first semester. 

Lesson 8: What are Guiding Principles?

This week’s lesson will introduce your child to guiding principles—the things that are most important to people that help them make decisions. Your child will learn about 10 common guiding principles and discuss how guiding principles can help them understand behavior, including their own

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about something important to you that you consider one of your guiding principles. Ask them to name some guiding principles that they found interesting or feel strongly about.

Lesson 9: Your Guiding Principles

In this week’s lesson, your child will identify some of their own guiding principles.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child to share some of their guiding principles. Ask what guiding principles they think are common in your household or extended family.

Lesson 10: Making Decisions

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how to use guiding principles when making a decision. This can help your child make decisions they feel good about.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about a tough decision you’ve made. Share what you think about when you’re making decisions. Ask your child to describe a tough decision they’ve made.

Lesson 11: Multiple Guiding Principles

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how to use multiple guiding principles when making a decision.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child about decisions they’ve made where they used or could have used their guiding principles.

Lesson 12: Thinking Short-Term and Long-Term

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how to evaluate short-term and long-term feelings when making a decision using guiding principles.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about a decision you made. Describe how it made you feel, both in the moment and after some time passed. Ask your child how short-term and long-term feelings can help them make decisions they feel good about.

Lesson 13: Using Your Guiding Principles

In this week’s lesson, your child will complete a story in which they use their guiding principles to make a decision and resolve a challenging situation.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child to describe their story and discuss the decision they made. Ask how they plan to include guiding principles in future decision-making

This unit will be taught during the second semester. 

Lesson 14: What Emotions Tell You

In this lesson, students will learn how to recognize the kind of information their emotions can give them in different situations and how that information can be useful.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child what type of emotions they felt today. Tell them the emotions you felt. What information did they get from those emotions? What did your emotions tell you?

Lesson 15: Emotions and Your Brain

In this lesson, students will learn how different parts of their brains play a part in managing their strong emotions.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child to teach you about some of the different parts of the brain and how they manage emotions. Look up a picture or video of the brain and learn some more!

Lesson 16: How Emotions Affect Your Decisions

In this lesson, students will analyze how strong emotions can influence their decision-making abilities, as well as how those decisions can affect their relationships.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child what sorts of things trigger strong emotions in them. Ask them how you can show support when those things happen.

Lesson 17: Managing Your Emotions

In this lesson, students will learn and practice several emotion-management strategies to help them make good decisions when they’re feeling a strong emotion.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child what strategy they like to use when they realize they need to manage their emotions. Share a strategy you like to use and see if it’s also helpful for them.

Lesson 18: What Works Best for You?

In this lesson, students will practice choosing an emotion-management strategy that works best for them in a given setting. They’ll look at several different settings and pick a strategy they think will work for them.

You Can Try This at Home

Discuss different scenarios that might happen at home or school where your child might need to use an emotion-management strategy. Talk through the scenarios and ask your child to share their thinking and reasoning with you.

Lesson 19: Raising Awareness About Managing Emotions

In this lesson, students will create a storyboard (a visual plan for a video) that will inform their peers about the benefits of using emotion-management strategies.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask to see your child’s storyboard. If they can’t bring it home, ask them to describe it to you

This unit will be taught during the second semester.

Lesson 20: You’re Changing

In this lesson, students will examine changes they’ve gone through and how those changes can affect their relationships.

You Can Try This at Home

Share how one of your friendships or relationships has changed over time. Ask your child to share how some of their friendships have changed since starting middle school.

Lesson 21: Why Conflicts Escalate

In this lesson, students will identify behaviors that can cause conflicts to escalate, so they keep them from becoming more serious.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about a time when you played a part in escalating a conflict. Explain what you wished you had done instead. Ask your child if they are part of a conflict right now that they need help with.

Lesson 22: Considering Multiple Perspectives

In this lesson, students will learn how to view situations from multiple perspectives so they can better avoid and resolve conflicts.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about a time when your view of a conflict changed because you were able to see it from another person’s perspective. Ask your child if they have changed their view about a conflict lately.

Lesson 23: Respectful Communication

In this lesson, students will practice using non-blaming language to resolve conflicts.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child to give you an example of non-blaming, respectful communication. Brainstorm with them to think of a time in your household when non-blaming language could have been helpful and make a plan for how to use respectful communication in the future.

Lesson 24: Resolving Challenging Conflicts

In this lesson, students will think through different ways to resolve a conflict and choose the one they think is best.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child why they think different conflicts need different solutions. Tell your child about a time when you had to think about the best way to solve a conflict. What did you think about? Did it work out in the end?

Lesson 25: Making Amends

In this lesson, students will learn ways to make amends and restore a relationship they may have harmed.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about a time you had to make amends with someone. What did you do to repair the harm?

Lesson 26: Conflict Solvers

In this lesson, students will use their conflict-solving expertise to help solve a realistic peer conflict.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask to see your child’s assignment. If they don’t have it, ask them to explain it to you. Think of a realistic conflict from real life, TV, a movie, or book and have your child explain the steps they would take to resolve it