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Currently our schools do not have a mandated SEL curriculum or mandated time to teach SEL with our students. But here are some activities and instruction that I currently use in my classroom.

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At the beginning of this course, I identified the area that I needed the most immediate attention on was 1.4: “Build a broad coalition and integrate SEL into plans”

While we use PBIS and have some district SEL teams, there is not specific SEL curriculum given to the teachers. I would suggest that the school/district mandates at least a 15-minute block of time into each day of focused and explicit SEL instruction from a specific curriculum.

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At the beginning of the year, students and the teacher come up with a classroom 'code' or contract. These include rules that as a class we will follow in order to be successful and kind students this year. This helps to promote interpersonal skills.

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Modeling is something I do everyday as a teacher in order for students to have observational learning and have examples of what we want them to do.
Bandura, combining the Behaviorism and Social Learning models help to teach student SEL skills and competences.

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What can you do at home? Family Literacy

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What can you do at home? Family Literacy

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1. Read books and stories together. Reading stories aloud is a way to share something enjoyable and learn about other people. Stories are a way to explore how people deal with common issues. Here is a website that helpful to get started with family literacy ideas to promote SEL at home through reading and writing.

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Problem-solving scenarios is a fun way to practice how to make responsible decisions that not only affect themselves but others and the community as well.
This allows for students to practice their problem-solving skills when making decisions about the scenarios.

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Demonstrating the capacity to make friends after more than a year of a pandemic is difficult for students which is what this competency is an important area to focus on for relationship management.
Students can think listen to read aloud of different friendships like the friends in the Magic School Bus, or Frog and Toad, or Elephant and Piggie to name a few and consider what makes a good friend. Students can then consider their own friends or what they think makes a good friend.

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Part of this area is also being able to work with others and help those in need. Creating opportunities for group work allows for students to practice this skill but it would be important to model and discuss what this looks like and doesn't look like with examples and non-examples.

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For this activity, using the idea of point of view, students will 'put themselves in someone else's shoes' and evaluation people's perception, how others act and why they might do that, and identify social cues that determine emotions.

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This activity is an example of helping to strategize and manage  emotions. This skill that can be brought into literature as you talk about character’s feelings and needs. Asking questions like  “How did _____ feel when_____ happened? How did she manage her emotions? ”
For some of my students also, we have. a flip book of tools and plans for expressing their emotions and then what breaks or things they need after they identify their feeling.

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Work on complementing themselves to recognize strengths and promote self confidence.

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Here are some self-awareness journal prompts that can be done with students.

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Daily emotions check-ins! As well as other variations like temperature checks for their moods or describing their mood as a kind of weather in order to identify their own emotions.

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How do I plan to continue to implement in the future?

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How do I plan to continue to implement in the future?

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Throughout this course, a school wide SEL literacy project was created. This is something I have showed coworkers who responded well to the idea and in the next school year something that I want to do. This plan helps to meet the competency area of Social Awareness, specifically appreciating diversity as it allows for reflection and opportunities to recognize similarities and differences between peers.

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Identified here with highlights and underlines are areas that I would like to start to focus on for SEL competencies and skills.

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This is a resource that I want to use to help find and use more SEL books into the classrooms and school.

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There are five SEL competencies: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills and social awareness.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) helps students integrate positive behaviours, attitudes and skills into their daily lives. Children are not born with the ability to manage their emotions in positive ways. Here are some of the ways social and emotional learning will help your students:

cooperate with others and manage conflict

develop and retain positive relationships with peers and adults

recognise and manage emotions

have a sense of purpose

be resilient

set and achieve positive goals

take on board perspectives of others

show empathy and kindness for others

make responsible decisions

increase appropriate and positive behaviour

reduce and deal with stress

improve their attitude towards school and learning

organise their time and tasks

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Social and Emotional Learning Centre - Children's Library Lady

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There are five SEL competencies: self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills and social awareness . Social and emotional learning (SEL) helps students integrate positive behaviours, attitudes and skills into their daily lives. Children are not born with the ability to manage their emotions in positive ways.

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I am currently working on a Donor's Choose project for a classroom library of SEL books to use as lessons and for students to read at their leisure.

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I have planned out and would like to integrate at least one community service learning projects. This will help to teach and reinforce the Responsible Decision Making competency since it will help students to identify problems, discuss strategies, implement problem solving skills, and make decisions that affect the individual, school and community.

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Given that I teach in Massachusetts, I spent time looking for the MA guidelines for SEL instruction, which were not much. Connecticut on the other hand, has numerous laws adhering to SEL instruction in schools as well as relating this to suspension, expulsion and mental, emotional and behavioral health plans for implementation. My plan as a teacher is to use these Connecticut laws to begin to guide my instruction and implementation of SEL into the classroom as I think aspects these laws are helpful to use.

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Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

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Social and Emotional Learning in Massachusetts - Office of Student and Family Support (SFS)

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The goal of the Massachusetts public K-12 education system is to prepare all students for success after high school. Massachusetts public school students are leading the nation in reading and math and are at the top internationally in reading, science, and math according to the national NAEP and int…

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In order to bring more awareness into my school about specific SEL strategies that we can teach with students, I plan on sharing and planning a professional development learning opportunity to educate teachers on the different ares of SEL.

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ClassDojo is something we use for PBIS in the school but also a tool that I use to help teach SEL strategies.

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This tool includes sequential videos for each idea, discussion questions and for some writing prompts or activities like goal setting or problem solving.

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At various times throughout the year, since we do not have a SEL curriculum, as I notice certain areas where my students need instruction, I have found picture books in the library that help to teach these skills. It is always fun to see how it clicks with students when they see "oh, yeah that happens to me!" or "oh yeah...I do that sometimes!" and then we can discuss/brainstorm strategies to help us when this happens.