Introduction to Second Step

Dear Family,

We want your child to be successful in school and that means supporting and encouraging their whole development. While excelling in academic classes is important, students also need skills to take on learning challenges, make good decisions, handle strong emotions, and get along with others. Over the last few weeks, we have begun Second Step® Middle School, a research-based social-emotional learning program designed to improve students’ social-emotional skills, such as emotion management, impulse control, problem solving, and empathy. Second Step skills and concepts are designed to help students both in and out of school. These include:

Mindsets and Goals: Students learn how to develop a growth mindset and apply research based goal-setting strategies to their social and academic lives.
Recognizing Bullying and Harassment: Students learn how to recognize bullying and harassment, stand up safely to bullying, and respond appropriately to harassment.
Thoughts, Emotions, and Decisions: Students learn how to recognize strong emotions and unhelpful thoughts, and apply strategies to manage their emotions and reduce stress.
Managing Relationships and Social Conflict: Students learn strategies for developing and maintaining healthy relationships, perspective-taking, and dealing with conflict.

6th Grade

Unit 1
Weekly family communications for lessons 1–7

Lesson 1a: Starting Middle School
Summary

This week’s lesson will introduce your child to the Second Step Middle School Program. Your child will identify challenges they might face when starting middle school and identify resources in their school where they can get help.

Question

Tell your child about something that made you nervous when you started middle school. Ask what makes them nervous and who they can go to for help at school.

Lesson 2: How to Grow Your Brain
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn about the brain’s ability to grow and change when they practice challenging things. Having a growth mindset supports your child’s success in school and in life.

Question

Tell your child about a time you had to learn something new. Explain whether it was hard to learn and how you learned it. Ask your child if there’s anything they would like to learn to do this year.

Lesson 3: Trying New Strategies
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will brainstorm different strategies they can try when they’re having trouble learning something new.

Question

Tell your child about a time you needed to change your approach in order to learn something new. Ask your child to tell you about something they’re working hard to learn and how you can help.

Lesson 4: Making Goals Specific
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how to identify and set achievable goals by making them specific.

Question

Ask your child to tell you about a specific goal they’re interested in working toward and what makes it specific.

Lesson 5: Breaking Down Your Goals
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will practice breaking big goals down into smaller, short-term goals.

Question

Think of a time you achieved a big goal, such as learning to drive or graduating from school. Tell your child about your goal and the series of smaller steps you needed to take to achieve it. Ask your child to tell you about a goal they have.

Lesson 6: Monitoring Your Progress
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn strategies for how to stay on track toward their goals. They’ll learn how to monitor their own progress, decide if they need to try new strategies, and determine when their goal is complete.

Question

Ask your child about a goal they’re actively working toward. Ask them if they are encountering any roadblocks and how you can help them determine the next steps forward.

Lesson 7: Bringing It All Together
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will bring it all together and create an action plan to help them accomplish one of the goals they chose at the beginning of the unit.

Question

Ask your child what their goal is, how they broke it down into smaller goals, and their plans for achieving it. Discuss how you can support them if things at home or in school slow them down or stand in their way and about how you can celebrate when they achieve their goal.

Unit 2
Weekly family communications for lessons 8–13

Lesson 8: Common Types of Bullying
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will discuss different types of bullying, and increase their awareness that bullying can look and feel different in each situation.

Question

Ask your child if they have experienced bullying or negative jokes recently. Encourage them to tell you how it made them feel and let them know you’re there to support them.

Lesson 9: Recognizing Bullying
Summary

This week’s lesson will help your child understand the difference between bullying and joking around, and that joking can escalate and become bullying. Helping students understand when joking becomes bullying can reduce negative impacts on others.

Question

Tell your child about a time you witnessed or experienced bullying. Describe how this made you feel and ask your child what they might have felt.

Lesson 10: Responding to Cyberbullying
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will use what they know about in-person bullying to compare it to cyberbullying. They’ll learn and apply different strategies for responding to cyberbullying in a safe and healthy way.

Question

Tell your child your thoughts on how social media has changed since you were in school. Ask your child about their thoughts on the benefits and disadvantages of social media in the world today.

Lesson 11: How to Be an Upstander
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn three “upstander strategies” for responding to bullying. They’ll practice analyzing different bullying situations and choosing an upstander strategy they think would work best for each situation.

Question

Ask your child about the three upstander strategies they learned and which one (or ones) they feel most comfortable with. Let them know they can always come to you if they need someone to talk to.

Lesson 12: Standing Up and Staying Safe
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will evaluate each upstander strategy (speaking up, offering support, and telling a trusted adult) in depth, with an emphasis on safety. They’ll evaluate the safety of each upstander strategy in different situations and consider their own level of comfort with each strategy.

Question

Tell your child about a time you used one of these strategies in your life recently. Tell them how you decided which strategy to use.

Lesson 13: Raising Awareness About Bullying
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child and their peers will create bullying awareness posters. The posters will be displayed around the school to educate others about bullying and how they can help stop it.

Question

Ask to see your child’s poster. If they don’t have a picture, have them describe it. Ask your child to tell you about how their attitude toward bullying has changed as a result of what they've learned in the unit.

Unit 3
Weekly family communications for lessons 14-19.

Lesson 14: What Emotions Tell You
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how to recognize the kind of information their emotions can give them in different situations and how that information can be useful.

Question

Ask your child what type of emotions they felt today. Tell them the emotions you felt. What information did they get from those emotions? What did your emotions tell you?

Lesson 15: Emotions and Your Brain
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how different parts of their brains play a part in managing their strong emotions.

Question

Ask your child to teach you about some of the different parts of the brain and how they manage emotions. Look up a picture or video of the brain and learn some more!

Lesson 16: How Emotions Affect Your Decisions
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will analyze how strong emotions can influence their decision-making abilities, as well as how those decisions can affect their relationships.

Question

Ask your child what sorts of things trigger strong emotions in them. Ask them how you can show support when those things happen.

Lesson 17: Managing Your Emotions
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn and practice several emotion-management strategies to help them make good decisions when they’re feeling a strong emotion.

Question

Ask your child what strategy they like to use when they realize they need to manage their emotions. Share a strategy you like to use and see if it’s also helpful for them.

Lesson 18: What Works Best for You?
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will practice choosing an emotion-management strategy that works best for them in a given setting. They’ll look at several different settings and pick a strategy they think will work for them.

Question

Discuss different scenarios that might happen at home or school where your child might need to use an emotion-management strategy. Talk through the scenarios and ask your child to share their thinking and reasoning with you.

Lesson 19: Raising Awareness About Managing Emotions
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will create a storyboard (a visual plan for a video) that will inform their peers about the benefits of using emotion-management strategies.

Question

Ask to see your child’s storyboard. If they can’t bring it home, ask them to describe it to you.

Unit 4
Weekly family communications for lessons 20–26

Lesson 20: We're Changing

Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will examine changes they’ve gone through and how those changes can affect their relationships.

Question

Share how one of your friendships or relationships has changed over time. Ask your child to share how some of their friendships have changed since starting middle school.

Lesson 21: Why Conflicts Escalate
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will identify behaviors that can cause conflicts to escalate, so they keep them from becoming more serious.

Question

Tell your child about a time when you played a part in escalating a conflict. Explain what you wished you had done instead. Ask your child if they are part of a conflict right now that they need help with.

Lesson 22: Considering Multiple Perspectives
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn how to view situations from multiple perspectives so they can better avoid and resolve conflicts.

Question

Tell your child about a time when your view of a conflict changed because you were able to see it from another person’s perspective. Ask your child if they have changed their view about a conflict lately.

Lesson 23: Respectful Communication
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will practice using non-blaming language to resolve conflicts.

Question

Ask your child to give you an example of non-blaming, respectful communication. Brainstorm with them to think of a time in your household when non-blaming language could have been helpful and make a plan for how to use respectful communication in the future.

Lesson 24: Resolving Challenging Conflicts
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will think through different ways to resolve a conflict and choose the one they think is best.

Question

Ask your child why they think different conflicts need different solutions. Tell your child about a time when you had to think about the best way to solve a conflict. What did you think about? Did it work out in the end?

Lesson 25: Making Amends
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will learn ways to make amends and restore a relationship they may have harmed.

Question

Tell your child about a time you had to make amends with someone. What did you do to repair the harm?

Lesson 26: Conflict Solvers
Summary

In this week’s lesson, your child will use their conflict-solving expertise to help solve a realistic peer conflict.

Question

Ask to see your child’s assignment. If they don’t have it, ask them to explain it to you. Think of a realistic conflict from real life, TV, a movie, or book and have your child explain the steps they would take to resolve it.