A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue

It has been a very busy couple of weeks with benchmark testing two weeks ago and lessons in the classrooms, small groups, individual sessions, Student Council meetings, No Place for Hate meetings, etc., etc. Last week I got to get back in the classrooms after helping with testing the previous week and was able to get to the K-2nd grade classrooms. I will finish up with Pre-K this week and start a new lesson with 3rd-5th grades! We had a very important, much needed lesson in our lower grades...tattling!!! Our little ones are still learning how to solve their own problems instead of running to an adult for every small problem they have, which is a hard lesson for some of them to learn! It's great that they feel like they can trust their teachers and parents to help them solve their problems, but they also have to learn to solve them on their own. To help them learn more about this, we read a fun fiction story called, A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue by Julia Cook.

In the story, Josh has a real problem with tattling and tattles on every single thing. His friends even start to get tired of it and he ends up not having many friends. The "Tattle Prince" ends up helping Josh learn the difference between telling someone something that is dangerous and that could hurt someone, and something that is a small issue he can fix on his own. An example of a small problem would be if someone took his pencil. Before going to an adult, he could ask for it back, share it, get another pencil and ignore it, talk it out with the person, etc. An example of a dangerous problem that would not be considered tattling would be when he overheard another student say he was going to beat up another student. That is an example of something he should tell an adult immediately. Here are the "Tattle Rules" we learned about.

         

Please help with the consistency of not tattling at school by encouraging your children to not tattle at home and to learn how to solve their own problems. Kelso's Choices is a great tool to help them learn how to solve their own problems and if you simply say to them, "Try one of Kelso's Choices," they should know just what to do. You can look at my previous blog for a refresher on what this is. Of course they need to know when it is okay to tell and we definitely went over that, too, and completed a sheet that let them figure out which scenarios were dangerous and which ones were not. Starting to learn how to solve their own problems now will help them greatly in the future when they are trying to work with their peers; even when they are adults. ;-)