Emotional Intelligence

Stop!  Think!  Choose!  Building Emotional Intelligence in Young People,  by Matta Mapes has some activities to help your class work together to overcome some of the challenges of diverse students in a classroom.  The text is broken into skill building units - "Knowing Yourself," "Accepting Yourself," "Managing Yourself," "Connecting with Others," "Communicating with Others," "Cooperating with Others," and "Handling Conflicts with Others."  I find that some of the activities work well for ice breakers to get the students talking to each other and knowing a little more about each other.  Two of the ones I like are "Who Am I" and "How Do Others See Me?"  There's also a guided imagery script about imagining the future.  If your students are willing to try it, it produces some interesting results.  It asks them to picture themselves at various times in their future and gives prompting questions to get them thinking about what it might be like for them at certain times in their future.  I have found this book really useful in essential/locally developed, applied, and alternative classes.

There is also a section at the back of the book called "Techniques for Developing Emotional Intelligence Skills through Content Areas."  It includes lesson ideas for incorporating emotional concepts into art, drama, English, science, health, math, music, physical education, and social studies.