Bennington Public Schools

This unit will be taught during 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: Creating New Pathways in Your Brain

In this lesson, students will learn that intelligence is not fixed; their brain actually makes new connections and their skills and abilities develop when they practice difficult things.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about a time you had to learn something challenging and explain how you persisted in learning it. Ask your child if there’s anything they would like to learn to do this year.

Lesson 3: Learning from Mistakes and Failure

In this lesson, students will learn how to learn from mistakes. When your child does difficult things, they may initially make mistakes and fail, but these mistakes can be chances to learn and grow.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about a mistake you made in the past and what you learned from it. Ask your child to tell you about a mistake they made and what they learned from it.

Lesson 4: Identifying Roadblocks

In this lesson, students will identify and distinguish between internal and external obstacles (or “roadblocks”) that can get in their way when working toward goals.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about a roadblock you encountered when you were working toward a goal, and if you had control over the roadblock.

Lesson 5: Overcoming Roadblocks 1

In this lesson, students will learn how to use If–Then plans to overcome roadblocks. If–Then Plans help your child anticipate potential roadblocks and come up with plans for addressing them.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child to explain to you what an If–Then Plan is. Work together to make a plan for how your child can respond positively to a difficult situation they might encounter at home.

Lesson 6: Overcoming Roadblocks 2

In this lesson, students will identify a goal they want to work on, anticipate roadblocks, and develop an If–Then Plan for their own goal.

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 big goal and some of the smaller goals you needed to finish in order to achieve it. Ask your child to tell you about a goal they have.

Lesson 7: Advice on Roadblocks

In this lesson, students will put their knowledge about overcoming roadblocks into action by giving advice to a sixth-grader who is struggling to learn something new.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about a time you had to try something new to overcome a roadblock, such as asking someone for help or looking at a problem with a different viewpoint. Tell your child what eventually helped you overcome that roadblock

This unit will be taught during the first semester. 

Lesson 8: What is Self Concept?

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn about self-concept—how they see and think about themselves. They’ll learn that a person’s self-concept can affect their actions and decisions, which is why it’s important to develop a positive self-concept.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child to explain what a self-concept is. Ask them why they think it’s important to have a positive self-concept.

Lesson 9: Your Self-Concept

In this week’s lesson, your child will describe multiple parts or pieces of their self-concept.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about the way you see yourself. Describe different aspects of your self-concept, such as the way you see yourself at work vs. at home. Ask your child to describe their self-concept, including how they see themselves emotionally, physically, socially, or at school.

Lesson 10: Influences on Self-Concept

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn about factors that shape and influence self-concept, including less obvious factors, such as comparison with others, messages in media, and what they believe others think about them.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about something that shapes or influences the way you see yourself. Ask them what shapes or influences their self-concept and which influences help them feel good about who they are.

Lesson 11: Changes in Self-Concept

 In this week’s lesson, your child will describe how their self-concept has changed over time.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about the way you saw yourself in middle school and how it’s different than the way you see yourself now. Ask them to describe how their self-concept has changed over time.

Lesson 12: Your Future Self-Concept

 In this week’s lesson, your child will envision their future self-concept, or how they want to see themselves in the future.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child what kind of person they want to become.

Lesson 13: Who will you Become?

In this week’s lesson, your child will describe what they can do now to connect their self-concept to who they want to be in the future.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child what they can start doing now to become the person they want to be in the future. Ask them why it’s important to see things in themselves that they feel good about

This unit will be taught during the second semester.

Lesson 14: Emotions Matter

In this lesson, students will learn how their brain handles strong emotions and brainstorm positive and negative decisions they might make when they feel a strong emotion.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child about a negative decision they recently made because they were feeling a strong emotion. Help them think about how they can turn that negative decision into a positive one if they feel that emotion again.

Lesson 15: Feel, Think, Do

In this lesson, students will distinguish thoughts from emotions. They will also analyze how emotions affect their thoughts, and how their thoughts can influence the decisions they make.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child to explain the difference between an emotion and a thought. Take turns expressing sentiments aloud and having the other person identify if the sentiments are thoughts or emotions. (For example, Emotion: “I’m so mad at the coach for not putting me in the game.” Thought: “That’s it—I quit!”)

Lesson 16: Unhelpful Thoughts

In this lesson, students will distinguish between helpful thoughts, which are thoughts that can help them make good decisions, and unhelpful thoughts, which are thoughts that can lead to negative decisions.

You Can Try This at Home

Tell your child about a helpful thought you recently had and the decision you made because of it. Ask them to share a helpful thought they had as well. If they can’t think of anything, point out something positive they did recently and help them identify the thought that went along with it.

Lesson 17: Reframe the Situation

In this lesson, students will learn ways to reframe a situation by turning unhelpful thoughts into helpful thoughts.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child to explain the difference between helpful and unhelpful thoughts. Tell your child about an unhelpful thought you had today and how you were able to change it to a helpful thought. Ask your child if they had an unhelpful thought and how you can support them in changing it to a helpful thought.

Lesson 18: Practicing Positive Self-Talk

In this lesson, students will practice a strategy called positive self-talk to help them reframe challenging situations.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask your child to explain what “negativity bias” is. Share with each other one or more good things that happened today.

Lesson 19: Making Better Decisions

In this lesson, students will share strategies for how to interrupt unhelpful thoughts and manage strong emotions with their peers by creating a comic strip.

You Can Try This at Home

Ask to see your child’s comic strip. If they don’t have the comic strip, ask them to explain it to you

This unit will be taught during the second semester. 

Lesson 20: What Makes a Conflict Escalate?

In this lesson, students will examine common reasons social conflicts escalate from minor to major.

You Can Try This at Home

Discuss with your child a time in your life when you were involved in an escalating conflict. What do you wish you had done instead? Ask your child if they are part of a conflict right now that they need help with.

Lesson 21: Keeping Your Cool in a Conflict

In this lesson, students will explore how using emotion-management strategies, such as slow breathing, walking away, reframing the situation, and practicing positive self-talk, can help prevent a conflict from escalating.

You Can Try This at Home

Share with your child strategies you use to help yourself feel calm during escalating conflicts. Ask them to tell you any additional strategies they find helpful beyond the ones covered in the lesson.

Lesson 22: Conflicts and Perspectives

In this lesson, students will learn how to listen to and consider someone else’s perspective during a conflict.

You Can Try This at Home

Discuss with your child a time in your life 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: Resolving Conflict Part 1

In this lesson, students will learn how to describe a conflict in a non-judgmental way by avoiding blaming language.

You Can Try This at Home

Discuss with your child a time in your life when you had a particularly difficult time resolving a conflict. How did avoiding blaming language help?

Lesson 24: Resolving Conflict Part 2

In this lesson, students will learn how to consider possible solutions, determine the negative and positive consequences of each of those solutions, and agree on the best solution for resolving a conflict.

You Can Try This at Home

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

Lesson 25: Taking Responsibility for Your Actions

In this lesson, students will learn how to take responsibility for their actions in a conflict and make things right.

You Can Try This at Home

Discuss with your child a time in your life when you had to take responsibility for your role in a conflict. What did you do to make things right and repair the harm?

Lesson 26: Tips for Resolving Conflicts

In this lesson, students will apply the skills and knowledge they’ve learned in this unit to create a tip sheet for resolving conflicts.

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 a book, and have your child share what tips they think would be helpful in resolving it