Content: What's the Buzz? for
Early Learners (revised edition, 2023)

Lesson 1: Meeting Archie and celebrating diversity

Lesson 1: Meeting Archie and celebrating diversity

Archie's story: "Let's meet Archie"

Learning intention

Our beginning is to teach children how to offer a friendly greeting and how to respond to one. This is where friendship starts! This lesson also presents the associated theme that friends can be different to each other. What's most important is to find interest, pleasure, and strength in these differences. Our What's the Buzz? Group Values are also introduced as a promise to keep a friendly and safe space.

Success criteria

The success criteria in this lesson will be achieved when the children can introduce themselves to the group, mentioning what they like and dislike, and respond thoughtfully to the opinions of others with a blend of encouraging statements and questions. You might also measure success based on how well the children can remember each other's names, the kindness they show when playing the games and from the positive feedback they give to one another.

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Lesson 2: Gently and smoothly joining in to play together

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Lesson 2: Gently and smoothly joining in to play together

Archie's story: "Archie wants to join in"

Learning intention

This lesson introduces the concept of how to pro-socially join in games and conversations without an abrupt or awkward arrival. It also supports students to understand the importance of welcoming and including other children who might like to join them. We explain that a 'friendly' approach is a skill worth learning. Being friendly gives everyone a better chance of a successful and sustainable interaction.

Success criteria

The success criteria in this lesson will be achieved when students observe a role-play or conversational scenario, then offer judgements and opinions on prosocial options. Success will also be determined by the quality of the children's role-plays as they attempt to join with a group, or the way in which they welcome others to join in.

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Lesson 3: The how and why of sharing and taking turns

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Lesson 3: The how and why of sharing and taking turns

Archie's story: "When sharing got hard"

Learning intention

This lesson investigates the ideas to successfully share and take turns. When these skills are learnt, and used mutually, opportunities open for children to make warm and meaningful connections are improved. The lesson also presents the 'assertive skills' - how to speak up with care, strength and poise when sharing and turn taking is not happening as anticipated. The goal here is to provide deeper insights into sharing and taking turns through conversations and role-play.

Success criteria

The success criteria in this lesson will be achieved when the children are able to express the essential expectations around sharing and turn taking, then in their role-plays, demonstrate exactly how to do this. In addition, the success criteria will be reflected when the children can explain and role-play various ways to cleverly resolve situations when sharing and turn taking does not go so well.

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Lesson 4: Cooperation: the art of working together

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Lesson 4: Cooperation: the art of working together

Archie's story: "Archie and the stick insect"

Learning intention

Children will be taught about the value of thinking beyond their own needs, in order to collaborate and cooperate with their peers for a better outcome. Children will better understand the benefits of listening to other people's ideas and wishes, while expressing their own in a respectful way. Through understanding the benefit of mutually respectful communication, students will learn ways to collaborate and work together in a way that is friendly and leads to an outcome that benefits everyone.

Success criteria

Success Criteria will be reached in this lesson when students demonstrate an understanding that working, playing and interacting solely based on your own wants and needs can be counterproductive. It is far more constructive to compromise and cooperate with others in a friendly and flexible way. Students will be better able to manage their frustration with alternative perspectives and work together with others to reach a shared outcome that is mutually respectful. This may initially be with small collaborations and as confidence grows, with larger ones.

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Lesson 5: Keeping calm and friendly while you wait your turn

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Lesson 5: Keeping calm and friendly while you wait your turn

Archie's story: "Archie has to wait"

Learning intention

This lesson teaches children the social value of waiting and how to do it with patience and style. It helps them understand that it is possible to manage waiting better by introducing a few clever waiting ideas. The act of needing to wait happens every day, so learning to be a helpful waiter is an important getting-along skill.

Success criteria

The success criteria in this lesson begins as the children wait, sit patiently, and listen intently to Archie's story. It will also be evidenced by the quality of waiting ideas exchanged between the children and then embedded in their role-plays. Mention to the group that patient people look out for the needs of others, so you are especially looking for cooperation, kindness, and helpfulness today.

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Lesson 6: Making things better - how to repair friendships when you've been upset with each other

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Lesson 6: Making things better - how to repair friendships when you've been upset with each other

Archie's story: "Archie has a fight"

Learning intention

As disagreements and upsets between children are inevitable, being prepared about why they happen and what to do about them, helps. Students will learn there are many friendly solutions to help friendships recover, repair, and reset. Conflict resolution skills are not innate – they must be learned. In this lesson, students will be explicitly taught how to repair these moments constructively.

Success criteria

Students will be successful at this restorative skill, in stages, and progressively. Conflict is triggering for all humans, and more so for young children whose big feelings can make it hard to keep their cool and use the pro social strategies they have been taught in the moment of conflict. You will know your students are close to, or have reached success, when you see them slowing down in conflict, noticing how their actions impact others, and having the courage to hear out a friend's perspective while expressing their own. Students will show an ability to not have to be right and to move the focus to making things better and returning to play, rather than staying angry and trying to prove a point.

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Lesson 7: Winning and losing – 'gracefully'

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Lesson 7: Winning and losing – 'gracefully'

Archie's story: "Archie loses"

Learning intention

This lesson acknowledges the tricky feelings often associated with winning and losing. Sometimes the excitement of a blinds us to how the person who has just lost the game might be feeling. And, losing a game can quickly conjure feelings of inadequacy, jealously and anger. This lesson offers practical ideas about what to think, say and do, following a win or loss, it emphasises that the best way to be an all-round winner is to play to win friendship. When the goal is to be kind and show friendship, you give yourself the best chance to win and lose gracefully.

Success criteria

The success criteria in this lesson will be realised when the children can discuss their own tricky feeling around winning and losing. Moreover, their understanding will be highlighted by their efforts in the role-plays, the

games they play and the language they're able to use to illustrate winning and losing with grace. The most important goal is play games to win friends. Kindness wins every time!

Lesson 8: Fact or opinion? Staying kind and friendly over different ideas

Lesson 8: Fact or opinion? Staying kind and friendly over different ideas

Archie's story: "That's your opinion!"

Learning intention

A common struggle early in childhood is possessing an understanding that what you think is right and true must be right and true for others. This shift from singular, egocentric thinking can easily lead to conflicts between younger children.

The learning goals for this lesson are to teach what a fact and an opinion is, the difference between them, and to help children understand that a natural consequence of friendship is being challenged, even provoked, by opposing opinions. Students will learn the kinds of feelings that different opinions can set off and learn how to respond respectfully rather than following the impulse to argue. With this knowledge, friendships are more likely to be enriched over having different ideas and opinions.

Success criteria

Students will be successful in this skill set when they can accept a different opinion without needing to challenge it by presenting their own opinion as a fact. Students will also show success when they can remain kind to each other, even when differences of opinion clearly exist. As children are still learning, they will naturally make mistakes and experience their share of squabbles. An important consideration when evaluating the success criteria for this lesson is that when they do have a disagreement, they are able to repair it soon enough, once tempers have cooled.

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Lesson 9: Working with feelings

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Lesson 9: Working with feelings

Archie's story: "Archie has BIG feelings"

Learning intention

Every experience has the scope to trigger the BIG emotions, especially in the lives of children. This lesson provides a foundation to identify and understand the BIG feelings we often experience and see in others. We teach 'smart thinking,' an approach to work with tricky feelings creatively and proactively. We also introduce the idea that feelings are usually accompanied by physiological symptoms. We refer to these as body clues or EARLY WARNING SIGNS.

Success criteria

The success criteria in this lesson will be accomplished as the children acknowledge the nature of Archie's BIG feelings and share insights about their own. Additionally, their verbal input about 'smart thinking' ideas, what they do and what they're prepared to try will be a salient measure of their current capacity. Finally, the children's understanding will be highlighted by the quality of their efforts in the role-plays, the games they play and the language they're able to use to illustrate the learning.

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Lesson 10: Angry feelings

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Lesson 10: Angry feelings

Archie's story: "Archie forgets"

Learning intention

This lesson is dedicated to normalising angry feelings, understanding them and exploring ways to deal with them more constructively.

We teach children that feeling angry is normal, and it usually happens because of frustration. Anger is a strong emotion to traverse, and without the right tools, young people may release it by breaking things, hurting others, and speaking unkindly. This is especially so for our youngest learners as they're young, inexperienced, and egocentric. Without a few tools to help regulate emotions, useful skills such as waiting, compromise, compassion and letting go of the power position is infinitely harder to access. Students learn the best way to handle anger is to be the boss of their own feelings by using 'smart thinking' – a plan to become calm, stay calm, think more clearly and make good decisions.

Success criteria

To be entirely successful will take time, and this time needs to be peppered with loads of opportunities for practice self-regulatory skills when angry feelings arise. A good guide towards meeting the success criteria is when students begin to verbalise their awareness about what angers them, how they respond, and their talk around strategies to take emotional control. Noticing their anger rising early on and using a tactic to calm down will indicate success too, and this has the best chance of occurring with patient, compassionate guidance from caring adults around them. The goal is not for them to never feel angry. Anger is an important messenger. It has its place in the human experience.

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Lesson 11: Wellbeing - Building healthy bodies, happy minds and steady feelings

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Lesson 11: Wellbeing - Building healthy bodies, happy minds and steady feelings

Archie's story: "Too tired to think?"

Learning intention

This lesson signals to children that there are a few essentials, within their control, they can use to boost their wellbeing. We explore concept of living a balanced life. Creating a balance between being involved in things they SHOULD DO (chores, helping others, schoolwork, plenty of sleep, healthy eating, exercise and so on) and the things they LIKE TO DO (video games, YouTube, watching TV, eating junk food, playing and so on) in life. Understanding and living this kind of balanced life is strongly linked to resiliency; managing day to day challenges with greater composure. Only then, are we more likely to use 'smart thinking' and live with greater optimism.

Success criteria

Students will achieve initial success as they appreciate the concept of living a balanced life. These understandings will be naturally assessed based on the children's responses to the discussions and activities strategically built into this lesson. In our experience most children grasp the link between lifestyle choices (things we SHOULD DO and things WE LIKE TO DO) and improved wellbeing opportunities. The next step is for children to apply them in their lives. To do this, they are highly reliant on parents, caregivers and educators who keep it in place by modelling it.

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Lesson 12: Honesty – telling the truth

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Lesson 12: Honesty – telling the truth

Archie's story: "Archie and the Lego® dump truck"

Learning intention

Our learning intention is to teach the value of honesty because it is one of the most important foundations for building trusting, respectful and healthy relationships. Students will also learn why the temptation to be dishonest, or to tell lies is common. We are prompted to tell lies to get what we want, to cover our mistakes or to keep out of trouble. It is important for children to know that we live in a forgiving community which means we respect people who tell the truth following making a mistake. Being honest and telling the truth underpins personal responsibility and genuine communication.

Success criteria

Students will achieve success as they begin to demonstrate an awareness that dishonesty is anti-social, causes difficulties between friends and has damaging consequences. As they discuss issues and role-play, we will be able to assess their capacity to display a conscience around being honest and having the skills to show remorse.

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Lesson 13: Speaking up (learning to be assertive)

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Lesson 13: Speaking up (learning to be assertive)

Archie's story: "Keep it a secret"

Learning intention

This lesson teaches children how to speak up respectfully and assertively when something isn't or doesn't feel right. The goal is to teach the skills to have the 'harder' or more 'difficult' conversations'. Being respectfully assertive does not guarantee a perfect outcome, but 'Wise Owl' provides a perfect model to do this. An additional theme investigates the concept of keeping secrets and promises. These are not necessarily bad, but secrets and promises that are forced, or may upset or hurt anyone, should never be kept. We alert children that they always have our permission to stay safe by speaking up.

Success criteria

The success criteria in this lesson will be revealed as the children begin to discuss Archie's story and share their opinions about the secret Charlie forced onto Archie, and whether it should be kept. The role-plays will immerse the children, albeit pretend, into practicing and refining the assertive skills by becoming a 'Wise Owl'. As well, participants will critique each role-play and communicate the skills that cleverly resolved the situation.

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Lesson 14: Empathy

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Lesson 14: Empathy

Archie's story: "The wonder of the web"

Learning intention

Empathy is the ability to step outside our own experience, imagine what another might be going through and then doing something to ease their pain, upset or loss. It is a crucial building block for building and maintaining relationships with others. This lesson teaches children how to experience empathy, as well as

what they can 'say and do' to show they have empathy. Helping children to understand the place of empathy, and its value in mutually respectful relationships, will serve them well throughout their lives.

Success criteria

When a child's empathy is strengthening, they begin to pay more attention to other people's feelings, values and tendencies. Over time their empathic awareness positively colours how they relate to others, and especially when they meet someone, they don't find easy to relate to. They will develop a curiosity about people where they look beyond the surface and try to put themselves in that person's shoes. Indeed, empathy is a complex skill which is only in the early stages of emerging for this age group.

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Lesson 15: A worrying moment – knowing how to deal with it

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Lesson 15: A worrying moment – knowing how to deal with it

Archie's story: "Archie's morning talk"

Learning intention

This lesson explores worry, or anxiety, through discussion, a little new learning and the exchange of ideas. We present the notion that a little worry is normal because it helps us to think about, plan and cope with what's happening in life. On the other hand, too much worry and not knowing how to deal with it is crippling. The central themes are to understand why we worry. To support the children to understand the signs of anxiety. To assess whether it is a 'real worry' or perhaps a 'false alarm' worry. Then, to develop a plan to feel safer and calmer so they can lead a full life.

Success criteria

The success criteria will be met as the children understand the origins of worry and being able to discern the difference between a 'real worry' and a 'false alarm' worry. A further gauge of meeting the success criteria will occur when the children can demonstrate they understand the three-step strategy to wisely cope with worry;

1. To identify what they are worried about? Name it and share it with a friend or trusted adult.
2. Decide if it is a 'real worry' or a 'false alarm' worry?
3. Plan. Think of a helpful way to work through the worry and stay safe.

Our goal is not to eliminate worry. Rather, let's understand it as an important messenger. It has a place in the human experience. A successful learner will understand worry, be able to articulate their feelings to others, then respond to it constructively with confidence.

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Lesson 16: Time to say goodbye

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Lesson 16: Time to say goodbye

Archie's story: "The lost goodbye"

Learning intention

Greetings and goodbyes are socially influential moments because first and last impressions matter. Often, people make up their minds about how they feel about a person soon after that first, "hi" or "hello." A good greeting and farewell offer a warmth and tone that's inviting, friendly, connected, and genuine. A successful greeting can engage others to want to grow connections in the future with us. Similarly, a great goodbye

delivers positive social feedback to improve prospects to reconnect later. There are several basic sub-skills, each requiring precision, that can make or break greetings and goodbyes.

As this lesson is the final in the Early Learners series, it is fitting to highlight the importance of a great goodbye to keep people connected. It also provides an opportunity to consider other farewells, like saying goodbye to a favourite teacher at the end of the school year, leaving new friends behind, changing neighbourhoods or schools, or farewelling a loved one or a pet. As always, use the lesson's subject matter flexibility, discussing whatever your students bring to the fore, so you keep it relevant to what's happening in their lives.

Success criteria

Students will realise absolute success when they are able to spontaneously greet and farewell others without prompts and with a spontaneity that displays warmth, friendliness, and aptness. Keep in mind that our Early Learners will take time to master these skills and use them suitably in every situation. Others will struggle with confidence because their anxious temperaments, neurodiversity, and/or learning difficulties. These issues slow down their processing speed and make it more difficult to seamlessly execute these social skills, no matter how well you have coached them, and how much a child intends to do well. As always, continue being patient and supportive, allowing time and practice to accumulate.