Lesson 6: Creating a lesson on coping skills

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Introduction

Coping skills are tools that students use to return back to baseline. When in red, yellow, or blue zone, students can use these these skills to return back to green zone. However, when in green zone, students may still want to use these skills in order to help keep them in green zone. So how do instructors explicitly teach coping skills? This lesson will give you some examples of how to do so. Then, you will create a lesson of your own to teach the use of one coping skill.

Coping skills should be taught in a lesson ahead of actually using it, however, explicit instruction is also given in the moment (when the skills needs to be used in real life).

Teaching Coping Skills

Be explicit. Pick one skill, and only teach that skill.
Be active. Have students practice and use that coping school throughout the lesson.
Be timely. Allow students the time to learn the new skill. Have them utilize it when they move out of green zone.

Objective Students will be able to appropriately use a fidget toy as a coping skill.

In this lesson, start by going over an emotion and a good time to use this coping skill. Why would this not be a good tool to use when in red zone? In red zone, we are angry and out of control of our body. Using a tool may not be safe. We can use this coping skill when in yell, green, or blue zone.

Fidget toys help to focus our mind on one thing, the item in our hand.

Introduce some ground rules before handing out fidgets: We keep them in our hands, our minds stay on the tool, our voices are off, our ears are listening to the music or teacher.

Hand out the tools and play some relaxing music. As students use the tool talk them through the senses: Ask them to think about these questions: "What does this fidget feel like? What does it do? Does it make a sound? How do I feel in this moment?"

Have students play with the fidget for about 5 minutes.

Have them return it back to the tool box and reflect on how using it felt.

Creating a Lesson

To wrap up this lesson, we are going to create a lesson on coping skills.

Step 1: Identify the coping skill you want to teach.

Step 2: What zones can this coping skill be used in?

Step 3: Create a plan for teaching. This can be in the form of a lesson plan or an explanation in paragraphs/words. Be sure to provide your lesson material (visuals are helpful here).

Head to the following link to create your plan. Add your own slide (you can add two slides if you need to, just make sure you put your name on both). [1]

Lesson Rubric

	3	2	1
Coping Skill is Explicit	Only 1 coping skill is taught clearly and concisely	More than 1 coping skill is taught but is mostly clear and concise	A coping skill is not clearly identified.
Coping Skills alignment to the Zones	The lesson clearly states and teaches what zones to use the coping skill in.	The lesson states and teaches some zones to use the coping skill in.	The lesson does not state or teach what zones to use the coping skill in.
Activity	The activity aligns with the coping skill and real life moments. Learners can easily transfer the activity to a real-world setting.	The activity somewhat aligns with the coping skill and real life moments. Learners have some difficult transferring the activity to a real-world setting.	The activity does not align with the coping skill and real life moments. Learners can not easily transfer the activity to a real-world setting.
Writing Style	Writing is clear and organized with little to no mistakes.	Writing is mostly clear and organized with some mistakes.	Writing is not clear and organized. Has many mistakes.

A look Forward

In the next unit, we will take a look at how families can transfer the zones and coping skills into their homes. Click the following link to head to the next unit: Unit 4: How can parents/guardians use the Zones of Regulation at home?