Activity 1: (10 minutes) WHAT IS COMMUNICATION?

Introduce the lesson with the slideshow and student check-in questions. Review the Pyramid of Happiness anchor chart from the slides. Review the third level of the pyramid and perform that action (wrap arms around yourself in a hug). Make the connection of good communication to feeling loved and showing love to others. Remind students about the actions associated with each level of the pyramid.

Review the Rules of Good Communication:

• Be an active listener.
• Listen first, speak second!
• Make and keep eye contact with the person talking.
• Hold still while someone is talking. Stay focused.
• When it is your turn to speak, talk slow enough and loud enough to be understood.
• Don’t interrupt the speaker. Take turns talking.

Have a discussion:

• What do we already know about how to talk to people?
• What are good ways to communicate?
• What are bad ways to communicate?
• When did someone make you feel better with their words?
• When did someone’s words make you feel bad?

Activity 2: (15 minutes) HOW TO BE A GOOD LISTENER

Review the Rules of Good Communication. Listening is the most important part of good communication!

• Be an active listener.
• Listen first, speak second!
• Make and keep eye contact with the person talking.
• Hold still while someone is talking. Stay focused.
• When it is your turn to speak, talk slow enough and loud enough to be understood.
• Don’t interrupt the speaker. Take turns talking.

Check for understanding:

• What does it mean to listen?
• Why is it important to listen?
• How does listening help us?
• How can I show that I am listening?

Read My Mouth Is a Volcano by Julia Cook or watch the read-aloud video. As you read the story, invite students to think about which rules of good communication are being broken. Have a class discussion:

• How does it feel when someone interrupts you?
• Why can it be hard not to interrupt?
• Does it ever feel like your mouth is a volcano?
• What can you do when it feels like the words are going to erupt?
• How can we practice listening and taking turns while communicating?

Invite students to think of an example in their own life when their mouth felt like a volcano. Invite students to share with a partner or with the class.

Activity 3: (10 minutes) SPEAK UP! WORDS HAVE POWER

Review the slideshow about how our words have power. Words can help, and words can hurt. Read Speak Up! by Miranda Paul or watch the read-aloud video “SPEAK UP” by Learning Tree T.V. Have the children share examples from the book where communicating or speaking up showed power. Have a discussion about how using communication to help others helps our well-being.

Extend the activity by having the children illustrate their ideas about how they can use their words to help others. Have them dictate their ideas as you write their words on the paper. Collate and bind all the papers to create a class book about ways you can SPEAK UP and help one another.

Activity 4: (10 minutes) HEART WORDS

Give each child a paper heart. Have the children share how they felt when someone’s words hurt their feelings or made them feel bad. For each example, have the children crumple or wrinkle the paper heart a little bit. When others use words that hurt, it hurts our hearts. Have a discussion:

• What can we do when our words have hurt someone else? An apology has 2 parts: “I’m sorry,” and “How can I fix this?”
• What can we do when we have been hurt by another’s unkind words? Take a deep breath (use the calming techniques you have learned) and speak up!

Have the children work with a partner to practice apologizing or saying sorry.

Words can help us feel love and share love. Invite the children to share the kinds of words that make them feel good. Talk about what it means to give someone a compliment, and have the children work in pairs to share kind words or compliments with one another. For every kind word, smooth out the paper heart until it is flat again.

• What are some of your favorite words that make others feel good?

Write these words on the paper hearts and post them on the bulletin board to help students remember to use kind words. Encourage the children to add to this list throughout the week.

Activity 5: (10 minutes) USING WORDS TO GET HELP OR SOLVE PROBLEMS

Tell the children that you want to play a game, and you are thinking of something you need help with in the classroom (Example: The crayons need to be picked up and put away). Invite the children to ask questions about things they see around the room to see if they can figure out what you need help with. (You may want to give them an example of a question to get them started in the right direction). They can only ask one question at a time, and you will only give them “yes” or “no” for an answer. Allow the children to ask questions until they can discover what you are thinking about.

• How hard was it to figure out what you needed help with?
• Is there an easier way to figure this out?
• How did it feel to not be able to figure out what help you needed?
• When we ask for what we need, it is easier for people to understand or help us.
• When we don’t ask for what we need, others can’t help and we can become frustrated.

Choose one child to come to the front of the class. Whisper a scenario where they need to use words to ask for what they need (i.e., “I want to play with someone,” “I can’t reach a book on the shelf,” “I’m hurt by what you said,” etc.). Have the child use their communication skills to help the other children understand what their need is.