Teaching Children Responsible Behavior

Physical education class is a great setting for teaching children social skills—and Teaching Children ResponsibleBehavior: A Complete Toolkit is an easy-to-use resource to impart those skills to elementary school-aged children

Teaching Children Responsible Behavior will help kids

• learn that their choices and actions have consequences;

• acquire social skills to help them achieve their potential; and

• discover how to show respect, challenge themselves, and be good friends and teammates as they work toward common goals.

This book and CD-ROM package, created by veteran teacher Sandy Hagenbach, defines three levels for teaching responsible behavior and provides unit plans and tools to bring those lessons to life. This program is based on Don Hellison’s levels of responsibility but is adapted to work specifically with younger children.

The levels focus on respect, challenge, and teamwork, and those concepts are taught and reinforced through several resources:

• Children’s stories that introduce and reinforce the three key concepts

• Ready-to-use activities that get kids moving and thinking

• Sample block plans that show how you might use the resources

• A CD-ROM with resources you can use to supplement your class activities as you implement all three levels

The CD offers the illustrated children’s stories in PDF and PowerPoint format; articles that explore physical activity and behavior issues with follow-up questions; letters to parents about the focus and concepts of each unit; resources for guest teachers; worksheets and activities that can be used as homework or informal assessments; and posters that reinforce each unit’s theme and concept and generate discussion about respect, challenge, and teamwork.

Part I of the book explores the issues surrounding teaching responsible behavior, how to create a positive environment, and how to assess student progress (as well as your own!).

Part II lays out the unit plans for the three key areas of responsible behavior. Each unit contains a children’s story that you can use to introduce a level—Respect, Challenge, or Teamwork—to your students. Each story uses a physical activity setting and is written specifically for physical education teachers as a tool to help them reach their learners.

Each unit closes with a list of NASPE standards and sample performance outcomes that the unit addresses as well as child-friendly complementary “I can” statements. The book and CD-ROM package is set up as a toolkit to allow you to use all the units or choose the units that fit best with your program.

Teaching Children Responsible Behavior is a flexible package that will help you better manage your classes, increase students’ time on task, shape positive behavior among your students, and help them make responsible choices in and out of the classroom. Use it to create a culture of respect in your classroom!

Sandy Hagenbach, MS, is a teacher at Heritage Elementary School in De Pere, Wisconsin. She has taught grades K-6 since 1978 and was named Wisconsin AHPERD Elementary Teacher of the Year in 2009. She also received the Golden Apple Award for innovative use of literature in physical education and is certified in adapted physical education. As part of the Wisconsin State Standards team, she helped write, Wisconsin’s learning priorities.

A Kohl education fellowship recipient in 2010, Hagenbach enjoys golf, swimming, and Nordic walking. Raising a son with autism has influenced Sandy’s teaching and has given her a unique perspective on teaching responsible behavior.