Social & Emotional Learning

Schools are socializing institutions. Beyond students' own families, they have the biggest impact on what students' learn about social expectations, values and responsibilities.

We cannot assume that students will learn about these things through common sense or instinct.

Collaborative and discussion based learning strategies can support the development of social skills. But only when we identify the specific skills and behaviours required to effectively participate in these ways of learning. 

We need to provide explicit instruction, modelling and repeated opportunities to rehearse these skills, behaviours and ways of thinking.

Collaborative and discussion based strategies are powerful differentiation tools that help diversify the way that students engage with and demonstrate their learning.

Increasing students' ability to participate in collaborative and discussion based learning strategies also helps improve student engagement, motivation and wellbeing. 

A school based professional learning inquiry undertaken with year 7-10 students in 2021 revealed that while we often assume that teenagers have very active social lives, much of it occurs through social media and during class time. Their family lives are often busy, friends may not live close by, and students frequently have responsibilities outside of school that can limit their participation in social activities.

Students identified that they don't get much of a chance to mingle, or learn how to communicate with people they don't know very well. One group of students identified that while they have a strong friendship group, speaking to people outside of this group can feel awkward and intimidating. 

Building in Social and Emotional Learning helps develop important life skills as well as creating a positive climate for learning.

Both of the below resources provide examples of how to use 'I' statements when talking about emotions and behaviours. They are a powerful strategy for modelling self-regulation and clear communication. 

Developing our own capacity to talk about our emotions, behaviours and the specific changes we would like to see helps us to model these skills for our students. 

Focus lessons on a key skill and a social goal

• Create learning activities where students can demonstrate this skill through participation in the activity.

• Recognise that for some students, returning to the social space of the classroom may be intimidating after remote learning – focus on supporting social skills, building relationships and confidence.

• It is important to provide predictable structures or routines for the lesson. 

• Develop routine instructional practices that students become familiar with to provide this predictability and alleviate students’ mental energy. 

• Routine instructional practices also save your sanity and reduce planning time! Once students are familiar with these practices it is easy to embed them in your lessons and takes less instructional time to get onto the learning.

Develop and stick to a routine lesson structure

Example

Introduction to learning – social connection, casual informal activity, something play based or mindful that doesn’t need to be related to focus of the lesson, but great if it is.

Mini-lesson - introduce the focus skill and knowledge for the lesson and model what we want students to do with it.

Student Learning Activity – something collaborative and social, balanced with spaces for independent activities.

Reflection / Wrap-up – bring the lesson to a close with a casual informal activity or game, or a small formative assessment task.

Why discussion based strategies are a valuable learning tool

A dialogic, discussion based classroom promotes questioning and dialogue as a key strategy for eliciting, connecting and developing thinking, as well as building interpersonal skills, and extending prior knowledge.

Classroom discussion makes students' thinking immediately 'visible' and creates opportunities for teachers to identify and respond to students misconceptions, as well as establishing students prior knowledge as a basis to build and extend ideas and thinking.

Often the students who are struggling to bring positive behaviours to the classroom have very limited models or examples of the positive behaviours we are asking them to learn. We need to show them what these behaviours are in a non-critical way.

All behaviour is learned, good and bad. Our feedback to students should focus on identifying the SEL behaviours and ways of thinking that we want them to develop, and taking a strengths based approach by highlighting when we see evidence of them.

By shining a light on the positive social behaviours and acts of self awareness and regulation that you are promoting in your classroom community you provide affirmational feedback to those who are contributing to a positive classroom environment. 

Perhaps more powerfully, you are showing those who don't what positive behaviours are valuable to the community. Students need to see what the behaviour we are asking of them actually looks like.