Module 9: Recognizing and Controlling Anger and Impulses

Effective Teacher Practices for Providing
Targeted Social Emotional Supports
Module 9: Recognizing and Controlling Anger & Impulses / / 2014

Objectives:

Participants will:

  • Understand how to effectively implement instructional practices and strategies that help children recognize and control anger and impulses
  • Understand how to involve families in practices related to recognizing and controlling anger and impulses that promote children’s emotional-social development and learning
  • Understand how to conduct formative assessment related to helping children recognize and control anger and impulses
  • Understand the relationships between targeted instructional practices, NC Foundations for Early Learning and Development and the NC Teaching Standards

Handouts:

  1. Pre-learning Assignment
  2. Helping Children Control Anger and Handle Disappointment
  1. Instructional Practices to Teach Recognizing and Controlling Anger and Impulses: Teacher/Staff Self Checklist
  2. The Mouse was Mad Book Nook
  3. Sometimes I’m Bombaloo Book Nook
  4. Self-Regulation Handout/Worksheet
  5. Teaching the Turtle Technique
  6. Instructional Practices to Teach Recognizing and Controlling Anger and Impulses: Observer Checklist
  7. NC Professional Teaching Standards (in supporting materials)
  8. NC Foundations for Early Learning and Development (in supporting materials)
  1. Foundations ‘at-a-glance’(in supporting materials)

NC Foundations at a Glance

  1. iPoints for Teachers
  2. iPoints for Administrators
  3. Crosswalk – Foundations-NC Standard Course of Study (supporting materials)
  4. Recognizing and Controlling Anger and Impulses-Formative Assessment
  5. Strategies for Helping Children Develop and Practice Impulse Control
  6. Message in a backpack-Self Control
  7. Teaching Cognitive Behavioral Intervention Techniques
  8. Post-learning activity

Pre-learning assignment discussion

  1. What are some of the cognitive behavioral intervention strategies you have used in your classroom? Provide specific examples of how you have used them with your children.
  1. You used the Instructional Practices for Recognizing and Controlling Anger and Impulses Teacher/Staff Checklist to assess the extent to which you use those practices. Which practice(s) do you wish to improve in the current or upcoming school year?
  1. You selected an instructional practice from the self-assessment that you would like to implement during the current school year. What are some strategies you could use to implement this practice?

Recognizing and Controlling Anger and Impulses

  • Emotional literacy is the ability to recognize, label and understand feelings in oneself and others (Webster-Stratton, 1999).
  • Young children who can recognize and understand feelings in themselves and others are healthier, less lonely, engage in less destructive behavior, and have greater academic achievement. Emotional literacy is one of the most important skills young children can be taught and is a prerequisite to self-regulation, problem solving and successful interpersonal relationships (Webster-Stratton, 1999).
  • “Controlling anger and impulse is perhaps the most difficult task of self-regulation. In real life situations that are upsetting, disappointing and frustrating it is a tough undertaking to remain calm”(Joseph, 2006).

In this session we will:

  • Discuss the possible long term effects of unresolved anger and lack of impulse control in the lives of young children
  • Talk about some ways to help young children recognize and label anger in themselves and others
  • Share strategies for teaching children how to control their anger
  • Discuss how to help children understand appropriate ways to express anger
  • Share strategies for helping children develop and practice impulse control.

Activity

Recall a situation in your life when you experienced feelings of anger which resulted in behavior on your part that was not becoming of you or you weren’t very proud of. What were some of the feelings that led up to your anger? What feelings did you have during your behavioral response? Did you have physical/physiological reactions (e.g. rapid heart rate, face became flushed etc.)?

Anger andAggression –Developmentally Appropriate Social Expression

While most adults can keep from acting on anger, in children it can manifest as hitting, kicking, biting, pushing, or throwing objects etc. Children use their bodies and express their feelings by pushing, grabbing and fighting. This is age appropriate for young children in the motor stage of development.

Anger and Aggression: Gender Bias and Racial Disparities

Racial disparities in discipline begin in the earliest years of schooling. New federal data reveal that in public preschools, black children make up 48 percent of students suspended more than once, but only 18 percent of total enrollment. By comparison, white students make up 26 percent of multiple suspensions but 43 percent of enrollment (Khadaroo, 2014).

Helping Children Recognize Anger

While aggression and inadequate impulse control can be an obstacle to problem solving and successful relationships in childhood (Joseph & Strain, 2006), we help children by teaching them to correctly read and interpret other’s cues.

Make it a habit to recognize and reflect to children when their personal feelings have changed. You can use a sentence pattern such as “You felt (feeling) and now you feel (feeling). Feelings change.” One example would be, “You were so sad this morning when your grandma left. Then you played with your friends and you felt happy! Feelings change.”

Because children learn as much from feelings of disappointment and anger as they do from happiness and joy, we can validate all feelings expressed by children by not using words that reflect a value judgment (Bilmes, 2004).

Helping Children Recognize Anger

This Sesame Street video can be used to help children recognize what it feels like to be angry. When a little boy’s truck gets stepped on, he feels angry and upset. His mother lets him know that it’s OK to be angry sometimes and helps him think about how he might be able to express these feelings. It also reinforces the notion that when you’re upset it doesn’t last forever and your feelings change!

Think about and write down some questions that could be included in your lesson plan to help the children in your classroom learn to talk about emotions. A few examples might be, “How do you think you would feel if this happened to you?” “Tell me about a time when you felt angry?” “I wonder how the boy who stepped on the truck felt.”

Helping Children Recognize Anger

  • Book Nooks are pre-created activities to support emotional literacy in the classroom, extension activities that piggy back onto other classroom activities, such as science and art -- under Resources: Practical Strategies for Teachers/Caregivers.
  • Handouts -- The Mouse was Mad Book Nook, Sometimes I’m Bombaloo book nook.

Self-Regulation

Self-regulation is defined in the Tools of the Mind curriculum, as a “critical competency that underlies the mindful, intentional, and thoughtful behaviors of younger and older children alike. The term self-regulation (sometimes also called executive function) refers to the capacity to control one’s impulses, both to stop doing something, if needed (even if one wants to continue doing it) and to start doing something else, if needed (even if one doesn’t want to do it).”

Find the handout titled, ‘Self-Regulation.’ Indicateaclassroom routine in the left column, write examples of self-regulation in the middle column, and write corresponding non-examples in the right column.

According to FirstSchool, self-regulation:

  • Allows young children to remain focused and persistent as they meet the daily challenges in a rigorous classroom (pg. 113)
  • Gives children skills they need to succeed in school so that they can maintain impulse control, motivate themselves, persist through difficult situations, and utilize effective academic strategies to independently master new information (Corno & Mandinach, 1983).

Teachers play a critical role in teaching children skills to self-regulate and providing them with opportunities to practice these skills (Bodrova & Leong, 2007).

Strategies for Teaching Self-Regulation

  • Help children identify and label their own and others’ feelings and emotions
  • Look at photos of children, label the children’s emotions, provide cues as to why a child might feel a certain way (e.g. “this girl has a big smile on her face, it seems like she may feel happy”)
  • Use actual situations that occur in the classroom for labeling children’s emotions such as, when a child’s mother brings him into the classroom and then leaves and the child begins to cry, the teacher may say, “It looks like Tommy may be feeling sad because he misses his mommy”
  • State our feelings when angry or frustrated and explain to the children how we are going to handle those feelings.

Self-Soothing

Respect and honor children’s self-soothing techniques unless they present a danger to self, others or property (Bilmes, 2004). Self-soothing strategies for managing emotions:

  • Rocking, thumb or finger sucking, hair stroking, cuddling a baby doll
  • Comfort items brought from home such as a family photo, small stuffed animal or Koosh Ball.
  • Attaching items to a belt loop with a string or key chain or using a small fanny pack.

Anger Choice Cards

When children are angry or upset instead of striking out, shouting, or doing something that might hurt someone or something, anger choice cards provide them with an alternative behavior. These can be posted in various places in the classroom or placed on rings for individual children to wear.

Make It Take It

Instructions:

  • Come up and get one of the Anger Choice Card sheets
  • You will also need to get scissors, a hole-punch and a metal ring. Please share with the people at your table!
  • Cut out the cards
  • Punch a hole in the upper corner of each one
  • Thread each card onto the metal ring.

The Turtle Technique

The turtle technique was originally developed to teach adults anger management skills and later was successfully adapted for school-age children (Schneider, 1974). Since then, the technique has been adapted and integrated into social skills programs for preschoolers (Kusche, 1994).

You can use a poster like the one on the screen to describe the basic steps of the technique. It can be accessed at

The steps are:

  1. Recognize your feeling(s)
  2. Thinking “stop”
  3. Tuck inside your “shell” and take 3 deep breaths
  4. Come out when calm and think of a “solution”

The turtle technique gives children an alternative to aggressive behavior. Teach and model ‘Tucker the Turtle’ during large and small group times and reinforce in real life situations as often as you can.

A great resource called Teaching the Turtle Technique has been included in your handouts andcan be accessed on line at teaching_the_turtle_technique(5).pdf.

It includes ideas for teaching the technique as well as a variety of extension activities with visuals for the classroom and home. Most of the resources used in activities are linked within this document.

Tucker the Turtle Video

At the time of the video, this classroom housed 14 children, a teacher, one full-time teacher assistant, and one part-time teacher assistant. Both of the teacher assistants were new to the classroom that school year. There were 11 children with IEPs. Ten were identified as having a Developmental Delay and one was identified as on the autism spectrum. Four children in the classroom were supported by NC Pre-K, and one child’s family paid tuition. The class included three-year-olds who do not attend every day – therefore you do not see all 14 children in the video clip.

In this video clip, the classroom teacher combines the use of a social story on taking turns with the Tucker the Turtle strategy, demonstrating how children can learn to take turns even when they experience feelings of anger, frustration and/or sadness by using the Tucker the Turtle strategy.

Find the Instructional Practices for Recognizing and Controlling Anger and Impulses Observer Checklistfrom your handouts and take a moment to review the instructional practices listed.

Instructional Practices Checklist

What did you see that was evidence of each of the practices on the checklists? Was there anything else the teacher could have done differently to promote learning?

Teaching Standards

See the handout from your supporting materials,NC Professional Teaching Standards. Which teaching standard(s) did the teacher demonstrate?

NC Foundations for Early Learning and Development

What early learning and development standards are children working toward when they use the Tucker the Turtle strategy? See your copy of Foundations for Early Learning and Development or the ‘at-glance’ document from your supporting materials.What skills can you identify under language development and communication, approaches to play and learning, health and physical, emotional and social development, cognitive?

iPoints

‘Instructional Practices Observed IN Teaching Standards’help teachers reflect on their practices and how those align with early learning and development standards and teaching standards. The iPoints for administrators are meant to help administrators see connections between practices, child standards, and teaching standards when observing classrooms.

Crosswalk

The crosswalk (in your supporting materials) aligns early learning and development standards with the NC Standard Course of Study (NC Essential Standards and the Common Core). One of the primary emotional social skills the Turtle the Tucker strategy hopes to promote in young children is the ability to identify, manage and express their needs (ESD-6).

Tucker the Turtle Props

  • Tucker the Turtle -- Sweetgum Puppets --
  • The social story, Tucker the Turtle Takes Time to Tuck and Think --from the CSEFEL website under Practical Strategies, Scripted Stories for Social Situations at

Tucker the TurtleProps

  • Turtle backpack -- filled with calming activities such as a variety of turtles, a class-made book, feeling faces and solution cards --purchased from Journey’s for $40 -- portable so it can be taken to another location
  • Tucker’s traveling bag -- a turtle puppet, the Tucker story, visuals, music, a journal for families to write in, a digital camera for families to take picture of their child with Tucker, and ideas for families to carry over the learning into the home.

Safe Place Breathing

Dr. Becky Bailey, developer of the Conscious Discipline program:

  • The first step in any discipline encounter is to take a deep calming breath -- three deep breaths shut off the fight or flight response in the body.
  • Four core active calming techniques

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Practice calming techniques:

  • See breathing icons around the room on the walls
  • See breathing icon on your table –that is the area to go first to learn the calming technique
  • After about 2-3 minutes, when you hear the signal move to the next area, until you have visited all four areas.
  • If you have a breathing icon under your chair, you will demonstrate the technique in the area that your breathing icon indicates (and will receive a set of icons to take home)

What other breathing techniques or physical calming strategies do you use in your classroom?

The Breathing Star helps childrenpractice the S.T.A.R calming technique. Instructions for making the star --

Safe Place

  • A place where children can learn to change their inner emotional state from upset to calm
  • Teachers teach children to use the “Safe Place” (Safe Space, Cozy Corner)
  • Children have the choice to use the “Safe Place” when they are feeling sad, frustrated, disappointed, or angry
  • The “Safe Place” is not intended to be used as time-out -- children can go to the “Safe Space” at any time during the day to calm their body, using a variety of calming techniques and activities that are stored there.

Safe Place Materials

  • Visuals and books about feelings and what you do with your feelings
  • Tucker the Turtle and the Tucker the Turtle book and poster
  • Manipulatives which include a variety of sensory items for tactile integration.

What instructional practices are teachers demonstrating when they teach children to use a ‘safe place’?

Safe Place video

In this video a teacher shares her Safe Place and the strategies and materials she incorporates into this area.

How might we conduct formative assessment as children enter the Safe Place and utilize various strategies and materials?

Formative assessment:

  • A moment-by-moment analysis of children’s learning
  • For the purpose of informing the teacher’s next instructional steps
  • To help children move through learning progressions
  • A process that occurs before, during, and after instruction and provides immediate feedback to children
  • Helps us know where we are going, where we are now, and how to close the gap.

See Foundations, page 61, Learning About Feelings, Developmental Indicators under Goal ESD-6: Children identify, manage and express their feelings.