Managing Impulsivity is one of the Habits of Mind we teach at our school and definitely the most beneficial habit for our young students.
Think first before speaking or doing anything.
This habit of mind helps remind kids to contemplate questions and situations before answering or reacting. After learning what the word impulsive means, they will recognize that sometimes their body does things that they did not intend it to do or realize it was doing. It helps kids catch themselves making weird noises, blurting, being wiggly, reading too quickly, or touching other students or objects. Teaching this habit of mind alleviates a lot of behaviors that interfere with teaching and learning and that is why it is the first habit of mind I teach. I do not recommend teaching it until your students can, for the most part, sit and listen and pay attention; otherwise, the whole lesson will be lost on them and not that effective. Also, it does no good to expect them to manage their impulsivity with a pencil if they haven’t yet had a few weeks of writing carefully together with you and realizing that they do have the power to keep things under control. That is why my teammate and I do not teach this habit of mind until the sixth week of school.
To be more concise, teaching Managing Impulsivity will help immensely with behavior management and quality of student written work.
In the video at the top of this post, you will not see me introducing the concept. I do that via a DVD I have from a company called Wonder Grove Learn. I pause the video and talk about it as we go along. You may find the video online, but the last time I saw it, it was just a teaser portion. The videos are excellent for the age group we teach, but you can easily teach this concept on your own. Talk about how being impulsive means letting your body and your mouth do whatever it wants to do. To not be impulsive is to think first (key words). From there, start pointing out—throughout the day and for every day for the rest of the year—when students are being impulsive and remind them to “manage your impulsivity” or “that was impulsive” or to “think first.” This should be common language in your classroom that everyone uses. Also, you don’t need the special color sheet you see in the video. You can use any color sheet to do a similar lesson.
Start with managing bodies and mouths and move into managing impulsivity with written school work and then when it comes to reading carefully (for example, “You can’t say that word; you need to look at the sounds and think first”).
Now, if I can just manage my impulsivity with that box of doughnuts at work…
Randee
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