Dear Parents and Guardians,

During April our kindergarteners, first graders and second graders continued learning about simple strategies for
solving small problems at school. We learned about kindly talking to the person that is bothering them, instead of
getting mad at them. We learned the three steps to an “I message” to help with this. They are:

1. State how you are feeling. “I feel…”

2. Kindly tell the person what they are doing that is bothering you. “When you…”
3. Come up with a plan to fix the situation. “Could you please…”

For example, if a student isn’t playing a game fairly we could say, “I feel frustrated when you don’t play fairly.
Could you please follow the rules?”

One of the biggest take-aways I hope students learned from this is that asking kindly can go a long way in helping
solve problems with friends. Even if they don’t remember all three steps to the “I message”, they can still use
kind, polite words when talking to their peers and friends.

This month the third, fourth, and fifth graders learned about four verbal problem solving strategies for small
problems at school. These were:

1-Make a Deal
2-Ask Them to Please Stop
3-Apologize
4-Talk it Out

These are simple strategies that students can use with small problems to help them work through the problems
independently. An important thing for the students to remember is that sometimes the other person doesn’t even
know they are doing anything that is annoying—and they don’t know to stop if we don’t kindly ask them to stop.

The sixth graders started thinking about middle school a little bit more in our lesson this month. Each student had
the opportunity to think of a strength that they have and an obstacle they are working on overcoming to help better
themselves. We all have strengths and obstacles and it was neat to see the sixth graders reflecting on their own
lives. Ask your students what they came up with! You won’t be disappointed—they had some great responses!

Thanks for all you do!

-Allison Durazzani
School Counselor