Following is a list of the skills and subskills for which lessons are provide in Martin Henley's Teaching Self-Control curriculum. Many of the lessons include simulation activities, role-plays, cooperative learning activities, learning center ideas, brainstorming activities, and/or children's books that provide a non-threatening way to teach or model the skills.

Controlling Impulses
Skill 1: Managing Situational Lure
-- Learning to identify appropriate behaviors outside the classroom
-- Learning to adjust behavior to match the situation
Skill 2: Demonstrating Patience
-- Learning to wait
-- Learning to take turns
-- Learning to help others
Skill 3: Verbalizing Feelings
-- Learning to build a feeling vocabulary
-- Learning to identify one's own feelings
-- Learning to identify feelings in others
-- Learning to share feelings
Skill 4: Resisting Tempting Objects
-- Learning to discuss how the allure of material objects can influence behavior
-- Learning to evaluate the need for material objects
-- Learning to use objects appropriately

Following School Routines
Skill 5: Following Rules
-- Learning to understand why rules are necessary
-- Learning to identify with rules
-- Learning to monitor one's own behavior
Skill 6: Organizing School Materials
-- Learning to follow instructions
-- Learning to plan a task
-- Learning to organize materials to complete a task
-- Learning to complete homework
Skill 7: Accepting Evaluative Comments
-- Learning to learn from mistakes
-- Learning to distinguish criticism from teasing, sarcasm, and mean statements
Skill 8: Making Classroom Transitions
-- Learning to follow steps in a routine
-- Learning to move appropriately around the classroom

Managing Group Situations
Skill 9: Maintaining Composure
-- Learning to ignore classroom distractions
-- Learning to independently select a classroom activity
-- Learning to behave appropriately when the teacher is out of the room
Skill 10: Appraising Peer Pressure
-- Learning to evaluate a situation in terms of personal beliefs about good and bad choices
-- Learning to act in accordance with personal beliefs
-- Learning to identify peer situations where students should say "no"
Skill 11: Participating in Group Activities
-- Learning to help others
-- Learning to cooperate
-- Learning to contribute to group discussions
Skill 12: Understanding How Behavior Affects Others
-- Learning to identify behaviors that affect others
-- Learning to demonstrate helping behaviors
-- Learning to behave responsibly

Managing Stress
Skill 13: Adapting to New Situations
-- Learning to identify ways by which people adapt to their surroundings
-- Learning to cope with change
-- Learning to direct one's own behavior
Skill 14: Coping With Competition
-- Learning to identify positive attributes of competition
-- Learning to participate in competitive games
Skill 15: Tolerating Frustration
-- Learning to identify feelings of frustration
-- Learning to develop methods of coping with frustration
Skill 16: Selecting Tension-Reducing Activities
-- Learning to identify physical signs of stress
-- Learning to identify situations that cause stress
-- Learning to identify tension-reducing activities

Solving Social Problems
Skill 17: Focusing on Present Situation
-- Learning to evaluate disturbing feelings
-- Learning to concentrate on a task
Skill 18: Learning From Past Experience
-- Learning to describe a chronology of events
-- Learning to learn from the experience of others
-- Learning to learn from one's own experience
Skill 19: Anticipating Consequences
-- Learning to explain cause and effect
-- Learning to understand the meaning of consequences
-- Learning to accept consequences for behavior
Skill 20: Resolving Conflicts
-- Learning to recognize situations
-- Learning to develop alternatives to conflict
-- Learning to use words to resolve conflicts

Click here to return to the e-interview with Martin Henley.

Article by Gary Hopkins
Education World®
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