The Wellness and Life Skills program contains three core areas of focus. The first is teaching students to identify emotions, perceive and recognize others’ perspectives, solve problems and manage emotions. The second focuses on mindfulness. Using a research-based curriculum, students are taught skills that build resilience to stress and anxiety, and to develop a positive mindset in both school and life. The third focus is preventing, recognizing and identifying bullying behaviors, and students learn that bullying behavior can be both physical and/or relational in nature. We emphasize the need for kind works, inclusionary practices, to avoid mean teasing and to report bullying behavior.

At this level, “The Husky Promise” is introduced to the students for the first time. The main social development objective for this grade level is to help students become kind and caring individuals. They should be respectful in their interactions with both peers and adults, and they are encouraged to use their words to resolve conflicts. Using the Responsive Classroom techniques of guided discovery and interactive modeling, we introduce students to all aspects of life in the classroom and school communities. Throughout these lessons, we emphasize the expectations for daily behaviors, procedures and processes using our four core values as a base while building a safe and welcoming classroom family.