Harold Bishop Elementary 22-23

Social Emotional Learning through Literacy

Collaborative Social, Emotional and Academic Learning (CASEL) defines SEL as the application and acquisition of, “the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.”  

Figure 1: CASEL Framework

The CASEL Framework (Figure 1) identifies 5 key areas of SEL development. Although all aspects of SEL are integrated into our daily work with students, we identified two targeted areas for student learning goals focusing on Responsible Decision Making and Social Awareness.

Our learners engage in a variety of literacy activities each day where they are communicating, reading, writing, and reflecting on their learning experiences in the area of Social and Emotional Learning.  Our educators develop curricular and social experiences to inspire, empower, and support our learners.

Literacy development is our focus at Harold Bishop because we understand that our learners need to be able to read, write, speak and communicate effectively as they move through their learning journey. This will be done through the three learning goals listed below.

Our Focus Goals: 

•  Developing an awareness of and taking responsibility for their social, physical, and natural environments by working independently and collaboratively for the benefit of others, communities, and the environment.
• Learning to make personal connections to stories and make meaning through experience and knowledge.  
•  Learning to deepen self-awareness through oral discussions and written text. 

Below are examples of our students’ classroom experiences as they relate to responsible decision making. 

During the year, our learners were introduced to literary text and asked to make personal connections, identify emotions and helpful ways to regulate them. While reading, the primary students were encouraged to identify and share their feelings. They engaged in classroom discussions reflecting on connections they made to the characters' emotions and reactions in the story. While reading, the students talk about how the character is feeling and what strategies the character could engage in for responsible decision making. 

Many of our classes are learning strategies to help recognize feelings and emotions and ways to make responsible decisions. In classes the following tools are used:  

• Sharing Circles with the story: The Sharing Circle by Theresa Larsen-Jonasson 

• Morning Meetings 

• Zones Check-In  

• Brain Breaks/Body Breaks 

• Deep Breathing Exercises like Rainbow, Bear, Bee, Snake, and Elephant Breaths/Belly Breathing 

• Breathing Ball 

• Yoga 

Our learners make connections to their community. They can explain how they are using their strengths and abilities in different ways.

Many of our classes are investigating local First Peoples' knowledge of sustainable land practices. Through this process, students have an opportunity to make responsible decisions that consider their role as individuals and community members making connections in a variety of ways to the ecosystem.

Our learning cohorts have created spaces within their learning environments for individuals to share connections through writing, story workshop and sharing circles. 

Our Learners are Developing an Understanding of the Role of Personal Decision-Making in Promoting Community Wellbeing 

The ability to make caring and positive choices about personal behaviour and social interactions is at the heart of responsible decision-making. In all areas of learning, students reflect on and evaluate the benefits and consequences of different actions. They think about the outcomes of these actions, and they ask themselves: How will this action impact others? Is it worth it? Why do I want to make this choice? Was this a strong choice? Will this help me or the community? 

Our learners are developing their personal and social responsible decision-making. Students have showed an increase in the ability to engage in a variety of literacy activities connected to the following curricular competencies: 

• Personal awareness and responsibility focusing on developing an awareness of and taking responsibility for their social, physical, and natural environments by working independently and collaboratively for the benefit of others, communities, and the environment.

• Learning to make personal connections to stories and make meaning through experience and knowledge.  

• Learning to deepen self-awareness through oral discussions and written text.

Our learners continue to make responsible decisions that benefit the natural environment 

Our Primary learning cohort has engaged in several learning activities that highlighted the importance of the power individuals have to make a collective environmental impact. Students created a closed ecosystem with a variety of plants and one to two earth worms. Students monitored the health of their ecosystem over a period of time to determine if the ecosystem was healthy and could thrive similar to what living things need on Earth. Students wrote reflections and shared their learning in small groups and in conferences with their classroom teacher. Our focus was primarily on the ethical responsibility of using the worms in their ecosystem and what efforts can be done to help maintain a biodiverse planet.  This learning objective was explored through picture books and various online media. 

When asked to reflect later on their learning of the ethical decision of placing the earth worms in their closed ecosystem, and  providing all the necessary requirements living things need to survive nearly our entire cohort (just over 80% proficiency) were able to provide at least one reason as to why it was important to make responsible decisions surrounding the importance of biodiversity for our planet to thrive and stay healthy and ways they could do to contribute to helping responsibly. They demonstrated this through many different activities, including class decisions, small group decisions (such as a think, pair, share) as well as written reflections and conferencing. Here is a sample of what some of the students shared after writing on their reflections sheets earlier this Spring. 

Our learners can make personal and meaningful connections to text 

In the beginning of the year our early primary cohorts  focused on making text to self-connections through a Social Emotional Lens, specifically focusing on making a personal and emotional connection to stories.  Our young learners demonstrated development of their responsible decision making through literacy by making self to text connections.

Connecting to and discussing the book Ishi: Simple Tips from A Solid Friend by Akiko Yabuki and other books like The Way I Feel, Crankenstein, When Sophie Gets Angry-Really, Really Angry..., Sometimes I Feel...SUNNY, Joy’s Greatest Joy and Simply Sadness has provided our young learners with the language they need to express themselves in a safe and healthy way.  

Based on their teachers' reflections, 62% of our learners were proficient and 38% were developling in demonstrating that they can sometimes share their emotions and know a self-regulation strategy to help express and manage those feelings.  Our early primary cohorts used both oral and written language to express their thoughts and ideas. Here is a sample of some of their responses to the the book Ishi. 

Further evidence of students' ability to make personal and meaningful connections to text was observed in their written response to the story In My Heart: A Book of Feelings by Jo Witek. This beautiful book journeys through the many ways we can feel at any given moment...or all at the same time! Students brainstormed all the feelings discussed in the story and added to that list with other feeling words they had learned from previous stories. Next, they were asked to share with an elbow buddy how they were feeling “right now”. They were then asked to look at the list and choose which six feelings best described them as a person and the emotions they often felt inside. Their final task was to choose only one of the feelings from their personal list and create a picture to match. Every student who participated in this learning activity could easily express the many feelings they had in their heart. Some of our young learners even added extra feelings to their list!  Below are some of the responses shared in their learning journals.

Moving Forward

Advancing our learners skillsets in self-awareness and responsible decision making have been very effective. Our students have progressed in their understanding of themselves and how this connects to their interactions with their peers, our school, and the surrounding community. As we continue with this work, we will build on it in the following ways.

• Create more ways for learning cohorts to develop the literacy skills to make personal connections to stories and make meaning through experience and knowledge.  

• Instructional strategies we implement will build on students’ successes in their social relationships by expanding opportunities to work collaboratively in groups and engage in more hands-on activities that are specifically aimed at developing students’ reading, writing, thinking, and communication skills.

• As a school community, we are committed to creating equitable, supportive, and caring learning environments where all children can thrive and reach their full potential. To this end, we will continue to monitor and adjust our student learning plan. By determining our progress; identifying what is working and what needs to be improved; evaluating the impact of our plan; and using this feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning – we will support learners from all communities in developing social emotional learning literacy proficiencies that cultivate cognitive skills and “thinking habits” that prepare them for future success.