Module One: Coping Power Lesson Overviews
Lesson Overview
Lesson Goal:
Students will practice cognitive coping strategies in a naturalistic situation to increase generalization in the classroom setting and beyond.
Lesson Objectives:
Students will use the Mood Monitor to identify triggers, unhelpful automatic thoughts, and the emotions experienced in relation to the triggers and thoughts.
Students will practice identifying and interrupting unhelpful automatic thoughts
Students will practice generating coping statements in response to difficult situations.
Students will apply thought-based coping to the PICC model.
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Welcome back! This is video number six, meaning that your students are officially halfway through the Coping Power program! We hope you and your students are already noticing all of the wonderful benefits the program has to offer.
As a reminder, last week we talked about the four unhelpful, automatic thought patterns, including catastrophizing, missing the positive, all-or-nothing thinking, and jumping to conclusions. Remember that catastrophizing occurs when we turn a small problem into something huge. Missing the positive is when we focus on only the negative things that are happening and ignore all of the great things. All-or-nothing thinking occurs when we assume things must be completely correct or not done at all, and any mistake is a failure. And jumping to conclusions occurs when we try to predict the future or guess what others are thinking. These types of thoughts can have a big impact on our emotions and the intensity of our emotion thermometer. As a reminder, your students are using the emotion thermometer graphic to help explain how intense their emotions are at any given time.
Unhelpful thoughts can make us feel really angry, frustrated, sad, or worried. If we’re able to change those thoughts into something more helpful, something that focuses on the positive, or on our own growth and improvement, we can bring down the intensity of our emotions, cope with challenges, and more easily solve problems.
This week’s lesson builds on those skills by engaging students in more positive, helpful self-talk. Thought coping involves the process of replacing an unhelpful automatic thought with a more helpful or realistic statement regarding a challenging situation.
Students are working to move away from thinking in extremes, like, “I always, they never” or “everything is bad, everyone hates me.” Instead, they’re now considering thoughts like, “I made a mistake, but I learned from it,” or, “I got in a fight with my friend, but we can work it out.” This will get them thinking from a strengths-based perspective: considering all of the amazing things they can do, ways they can learn, and new skills they’ve acquired as they’ve made mistakes and grown.
Students are applying this skill with a series of sample unhelpful, automatic thoughts. They are changing the thoughts in the sample items to be more helpful and considering how changing those thoughts would impact their overall emotions and the intensity of those emotions.
For this week’s challenge task, we encourage you to continue working with your students on recognizing, stopping, and now changing their unhelpful thought patterns. Throughout the week, notice opportunities where students are engaging in negative self-talk or experiencing upsetting events. For example, if a student was unsuccessful in a task and you notice them shutting down or engaging in negative self-talk, guide them through replacing their unhelpful statements with more helpful ones.
Thanks for watching! We’ll see you next week.
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Academic Extensions of Lesson Content
Looking for ways to include this week’s Coping Power content in your classroom lessons? Check out our suggestions below:
Math
When having students start working independently or in groups on a new math concept for the first time, remind them to check in with their thoughts as they begin working. Remind students that sometimes when we are trying something new for the first time, we can get frustrated and participate in negative self talk. Show students examples of reframing negative thoughts (like the one in lesson 6 of Coping Power), and invite them to practice reframing any self-criticism or negative thoughts that come up as they try new math skills.
English/ Language Arts
Present students with a passage in which a character is participating in negative self-talk or self-criticism. Students could also be tasked with finding examples of this in their own independent reading text. Have students complete a writing activity in which they rewrite the given passage to change the “unhelpful” negative self-talk observed into “helpful” more positive thoughts.
Social Studies
In conjunction with lessons on a challenging time in the United States (for example, the winter in Jamestown): Separate students into small groups. Give each group a “negative thought” scenario that fits an event they learned about in social studies. For example:
Samuel lives with his family in Jamestown. Winter is getting closer, and their crops have all died. He is worried that his family will not have enough food to make it through the winter. Samuel thinks to himself, “All of our crops are dead and we’ll never have enough food to make it through the cold winter.”
Students will discuss how the negative thought given in the scenario could by altered to flip the perspective into a more positive thought:
What might be a more positive way Samuel could frame his self-talk?
“This fall has been really hard for everyone in Jamestown, but my family is really strong and has survived hard winters here before, even when our crops died. I know we will be able to do it again.”
Science
What do scientists do when their experiments don’t work on the first try? -> Show students pictures of famous scientists, along with what discovery they are best known for:
Ex: Albert Einstein is best known for his discoveries relating energy and mass in the equation E = mc2 .
After introducing each scientist, talk about how it takes many, many attempts and iterations of experiments for success to be achieved. For example, Einstein is quoted saying, “I have tried 99 times and have failed, but on the 100th time came success.” Relate each scientist’s successes to positive self-talk and a growth mindset. Teach students that, as scientists, reframing negativity is essential to staying motivated, even if it is frustrating not to get the intended results right away.