The Social Express

Because of the four extra classrooms that moved over to our campus this year and the lack of space to feed 175 kids all at the same time, we were separated into two different schedules for breakfast and lunch. Unfortunately my three friends that I ate lunch with in previous years are now on the opposite lunch schedule as me. It's kind of a shame because we used to do a lot of things together with our kids AND we did major brainstorming during our many lunches together. Now I spend my lunches in my room, alone, looking for cool things I can do with my kids.

So, yesterday I stumbled upon a cool site called The Social Express while looking around Youtube. You can read about it in the box here <---- I love that the kids appear older, possibly teenagers. A lot of the videos I find for my students seem very babyish and trust me, they let me know. I watched this full 10 minute tutorial to get a better idea of what the site had to offer and was really impressed. You get a free 5 day trial and if you like it, it's only 4.99 a month!

There are 47 lessons in all and you can't move up levels (3) until you complete the level before. The small clips (webisodes) cover all different skills like self-management, listening skills and conflict resolution among others. The clips pause when there is a "teaching moment" and also when there is an option for the kids to choose. It also gives you an option to add your kids which I assume would be if they were doing them individually on the ipad or computer to track who has seen what. We did ours over the projector as a whole class and each lesson lasted about 5-7 minutes including our talking. There are also worksheets you can download that coincide with the clips. We did 4 of the clips yesterday during our afternoon class time and the kids stayed very involved in the clips and the conversation.

Check it out, remember it's free for 5 days, so start on a Monday and not a Wednesday like I did, doh! I highly recommend you check out the tutorial first so you can see see how it works and all it has to offer. Here are the links to the tutorial and website The Social Express 

One more day till the weekend!!

Enjoy,