Working Social-Emotional Learning Into Everyday Classroom Life

Classrooms need Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) now more than ever. Since teachers don’t have extra time to fit it in during the day, they can implement SEL into everyday classroom life.

“Our job is supporting the whole child,” says Shay Galletti, Director of Elementary Education, Pleasanton Unified School District. “And our job isn’t just academics. Social-emotional learning lets students access their academics.”

Social-emotional learning gives students tools and practice for managing emotions, feeling and showing empathy for others, building and keeping supportive relationships, and making responsible decisions. The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) separates SEL into 5 specific competencies:

Ideas to Embed SEL in the Classroom

ROUTINE AND ENVIRONMENT

1. Develop a Predictable Routine.
Predictable routines help regulate students, as do reminders when transitions are upcoming. For example, “In five minutes, we will clean up.” Arizona kindergarten teacher Jennifer Glueck says, “It gives them a sense of what comes next. They need that routine, and they don’t like surprises.”

2. Provide Clear Expectations.
Be clear about your expectations for your classroom procedures and work. Model your expectations of what something looks like and sounds like. In Glueck’s kindergarten class, they practice routines for learning, and she has posters to show expectations for how students sit in the chair, put away their whiteboards, and so forth.

3. Create a Supportive Community of Learners
When students believe they belong and feel safe emotionally and physically, they can access learning. Former Colorado principal Diane Naghi says, “When the kid gets honored and affirmed, saying that it’s ok for you to be feeling what you’re feeling, it really helps kids a lot.”

4. Stop for Feelings Checks
Teach kids to stop and notice their feelings in the mornings and before and after content learning or tests. (What am I feeling, and why am I feeling that way?) Use a tool like RULER’s Mood Meter or Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions. Naghi says, “The goal is to name your emotion and express how you’re feeling. When teachers have the kids check-in in the morning, you know right away if they are feeling upset about something.”

5. Offer a Calming Area
Create a calm-down area for children with big feelings that are overpowering them. Make a cozy space with pillows, emotions charts, stress balls, glitter jars, kinetic sand, journals, art supplies, and procedures for the area.

CONTENT LESSONS & ACTIVITIES

1. Model Your Own Social-Emotional Skills.
With the CASEL competencies in mind, find teachable moments when you can model your skills and processes. For example, when an angry colleague confronted teacher Wendy Turner in her classroom, she modeled self-awareness, self-management, and responsible decision-making, which meant noticing that she felt angry, monitoring how she spoke, and calming down. But it doesn’t have to be this dramatic; you can model feeling stressed before a test and strategies to keep calm. In addition, you can model empathy with students going through hard things and relationship building when you engage with students and colleagues. If you label what you’re doing (empathy, self-awareness, etc.), it’s an even more powerful way to embed SEL learning for students.

2. Implement Group and Partner Activities.
When done with support and clear expectations, partner and group work in the classroom provides opportunities to build self-management, social-awareness skills, relationships with other students, and communication skills. Glueck found Kagan Cooperative Learning to be the most helpful resource for her students.

3. Learn From Books.
Anything you read — independently, in groups, or as a read-aloud — can springboard discussions of one or more SEL competencies. Notice if the main characters in the story are self-aware and if you can guess what they are feeling. Discuss if you feel empathy for certain characters. Notice how the characters deal with conflict. New York teacher Rachael Wilde adds, “We use novels to create spaces for kids to process their own experiences, grounded in the experience of a character.”

4. Use Journaling and Poetry Writing.
Use journaling and poetry to help students with social-emotional skills. Both journaling and poetry are powerful outlets for emotional expression and self-reflection. Prompts for different focuses like these can be helpful, but so can freewriting when students need to express their feelings non-verbally.

5. Reflective Closures.
CASEL suggests planning for intentional activity endings to provide a sense of accomplishment and support forward-thinking. At the end of an activity, ask kids to think, write, or say something from one of these examples: Something I learned today, I am curious about, something I still question. Naghi recommends you end your day with a closing circle. “Reflect in the closing circle. How did you help someone today?” She adds, “There’s a lot of reflective dialogue in social-emotional learning focusing on knowing yourself and helping others.”