Hazelgrove Elementary
OUR CONTEXT
STORM
At the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, as part of our discussions about our school code of conduct, we updated our STORM matrix. We are the Hazelgrove Hurricanes and we believe the attributes spelled out in this matrix reflect who we are and what we value.
S is for Safety. Make sure your actions don't hurt others.
T is for being a Team Player. Think about others and how they would like to be treated and be supportive of other students.
O reminds us about the importance of being Organized. It's important to take care of your belongings and be ready for learning everyday.
R stands for being Respectful. It is important to have positive interactions with adults and other students and treat them with kindness and dignity.
M is for Mindfulness. Mindfulness is thinking about our own thoughts and feelings and relates to the work on Social Emotional Learning (SEL) we have been doing at Hazelgrove for the past several years. Self awareness is a key ingredient of mindfulness.
Hazelgrove is a large dynamic Elementary school in the heart of the Clayton community in Surrey, BC. Our school is committed to developing Social Emotional competencies in our students. We believe that if we know the stories of our learners, and their strengths and stretches, we can encourage them to grow and be their best selves. We acknowledge the First Peoples Principles of Learning that learning involves patience and time and the requires the exploration of one's identity.
OUR LEARNERS
Social Emotional Learning
Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is the process that supports adults, youth, and children in developing skills that are necessary for school, work, and life. At Hazelgrove, our school goal is to help our students become better problem solvers through self awareness and self management.
We started this journey in September 2017 when we began to focus on and help students develop growth mindset thinking. When students believe they can get smarter, they understand that effort makes them stronger. Therefore, they put in extra time and effort, and that leads to higher achievement. At Hazelgrove we have continued to use growth mindset language in classrooms and around the school. Teachers have continued to focus lessons and class discussions with the goal of helping students recognize how they approach a problem or a difficult task. We are teaching students about the value of grit.
During the 2019-20 school year, our SEL Committee and SEL Lead Teacher began to gather resources from the Collaboration for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL). Our focus evolved to help students develop the CASEL 5 SEL Competencies shown in the graphic below. We continued to share resources and observe our students while also focusing on well being and resiliency the following year during the height of COVID restrictions and the resulting anxiety and unease in our school community.
During the 2021-22 school year we have continued to refer to the CASEL competencies and found ourselves focusing on self awareness and self management as practices that were ongoing. Responsible decision making emerged as an area of particular need that required further exploration and attention.
Self Awareness
At Hazelgrove Elementary, our students can identify their emotions.
We know that we can't manage our emotions without understanding and naming them. By doing this we are better able to understand ourselves and how our brains works. We can then start to develop strategies to manage emotions in age appropriate ways specifically suited to our own needs.
In our two grade 3/4 and 4 cohort classes, teachers have spent time explaining the limbic system and identifying parts of the brain that help individuals to control their emotions, such as the amygdala and hippocampus. Students learn how the brain reacts to positive and negative stimuli and how this effects their bodies responses. Students are familiar with the expression "fight, flight or freeze" and the bodies response to stress or fear.
One of our cohort teachers reflected on how she has seen students using this language in class and outside:
In our SEL lessons we have taught students directly that if their minds and bodies aren't calm, then they are not able to learn. I have seen students extremely angry or extremely anxious and they have commented that they are not ready to learn. I remind them about what we have studied about the brains and how they have "flipped their lid". We then review our calm down strategies and come up with one together that works for the student's situation. Students are learning about how their brains work and how they are wired.
Self Management
At Hazelgrove Elementary, our students are developing strategies to help them manage emotions.
In this math and SEL example, our grade 4 students have learned different strategies to solve computation problems. They are taught a variety of strategies, some involving multiple steps. Problem solving requires students to identify a numeracy problem, choose a strategy and work through the steps. This can be challenging for many students. Below are some students' self reflections relating to these tasks:
In Math, when I am finding things difficult I try to keep a growth mindset. For example when I was learning subtraction I thought I couldn't do it, but I started getting a growth mindset and I said to myself, I can do this, I will get it. It is ok to make mistakes. This helps me so I don't give up.
In Math, when I am finding things difficult with long division, I stop and ask my teacher for help or ask if I can have a break. For example sometimes when it looks too hard or there is too many questions I want to give up. I would do a couple questions and have a break and do more after a break."
In Math, when I am finding things difficult, I take some deep breaths. For example, in long division, I feel like I should give up and not even try to do it.... If it's still hard, I take a break and then I try again.
Other examples that can be seen around the school of students using strategies to manage their emotions include:
- Practicing mindful breathing (such as square breathing, focusing on inhaling and exhaling as well as slowing down and controlling our breathing).
- Practicing mindful movement (such as checking your heart rate, slowing your body, stretching and balancing).
- Asking for and using tools to help students manage their environment or stimulate their brain such as head phones, wiggle seats and fidget toys.
Responsible Decision Making
At Hazelgrove Elementary, our students are learning how to identify solutions for personal and social problems.
During the 2021-22 year our SEL Lead and SEL committee provided teachers with the tools to explicitly teach problem solving skills. From our school wide survey (described below) we noticed that many students described the challenges of inter-personal conflicts outside on the playground. Teachers were also finding that these problems were carrying over to class after recess. During the month of April (2022), we dedicated several minutes each day on our morning announcements to describe various conflict scenarios and possible solutions. These scenarios were developed, in part, with the students, applicable to both primary and intermediate situations. Teachers were invited to further explore these scenarios in class using our shared bank of SEL resources available on a shared electronic folder.
Surveys
In October, 2021, we had our students complete a survey to get some baseline information about how they view school and are feeling. Our goals was to gauge students' awareness of themselves and strategies for problem solving narrow our focus to one or two competency areas. From this survey, our students told us:
- They generally feel safe at school, trust the adults there and feel like they belong
- They like the way they are, they have friends, feel they work well with others and that people generally care about each other at school
- They try their best, but would like more choice in school
- Students are working at being able to solve problems but still need help and adult intervention
From this information, our SEL committee began putting together resources to focus on problem solving and responsible decision making.
OUR FOCUS
Social Emotional Learning
At Hazelgrove, our goal is to help student build social emotional learning skills. We recognize that all 5 of the CASEL competencies are important but we are focusing primarily on three areas:
- Self Awareness
- Self Management
- Responsible Decision Making
Working on these competencies helps students to better know and understand themselves and apply that knowledge to getting along with others and succeeding in learning tasks.
Our Cohort
To identify students’ overall strengths and areas for growth, we tracked Self Awareness, Self Management and Responsible Decision-Making in two cohorts of grade 3 and 4 learners across subject areas and grade levels. These cohorts include a diverse range of learners that are representative of our school’s population. Students in these cohorts participated in various SEL themed lessons focused on our three main competency areas. These lessons were drawn directly from CASEL as well as the MindUp and Second Step programs.
MindUP
The goal of the MindUP program is to help students develop the mental fitness to build a happier, healthier and more balanced life. The MindUP Program teaches the strategies and skills children need to foster social and emotional awareness, enhance psychological well being and promote academic success. Examples of lessons include:
- Understanding how our brain works
- Mindful awareness (including seeing, listening, smelling and tasking)
- Mindful movement
- Perspective taking
- Choosing optimism and expressing gratitude
Second Step
The goal of Second Step is to help students build a foundation for a positive, inclusive culture through developing social emotional competencies, which include perspective taking, empathy, processing emotions, understanding and resolving conflicts and building positive relationships.
Examples of lessons include:
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Other Lessons and Activities
Teachers have also participated in other activities and lessons including:
- Using picture books to support SEL themes like identifying and naming big emotions and solving problem peacefully.
- Providing direct instruction about and practicing positive self talk.
- Evaluating the consequences of actions.
- Developing an understanding of the role of personal decision making in promoting community wellbeing.
Students' Learning Experiences
At Hazelgrove, our cohort teachers have also begun to link self awareness and self management strategies to curricular learning areas. We know that a focus on social emotional learning helps students to become more calm, alert and ready to learn. Teachers have begun to examine how students apply these skills to two specific grade 3 and 4 competencies in the English Language Arts curriculum:
- Using personal experience and knowledge to connect to text and deepen understanding of self, community, and world.
- Recognizing the role of language in personal, social and cultural identity
OUR NEXT STEPS
Responsible Decision Making
After our SEL committee went through the results of the survey, they were curious as to whether students were able to take the self-regulation and problem-solving strategies they learned in SEL lessons and apply them to problems they might come across in numeracy and literacy. A focus group of Grade 4 teachers from the SEL committee have begun to do a deep dive into this work with their students. Recently, they posed the following question to their students:
Students responded in the following ways:
In writing, when I am finding things difficult, I struggle but I try my best to persevere. For example in spelling when I practice with my mom I keep pouting when I don't do good but my mom helps me to stay in a growth mindset like taking a break or taking a deep breath."
In Art when I am finding things difficult I stop, take a small break, go back, and erase what's wrong and try again. For example, if you get angry, and you keep on trying, but you just couldn't do it, you have to stop and take a break. This helps me, because taking a break and taking deep breaths will sort of reset your amygdala to calm you down."
In writing, when I am finding things difficult, I use headphones to focus."
In journal when I am finding things difficult I take three deep breaths. For example when I am doing my journal I always get stuck so I take three deep breaths."
The teachers involved in the study were proud of their students for their insightful reflections and their ability to make connections to their learning. After reading all of the responses, the teachers determined that students were still struggling with explicitly naming the strategies they had learned. When participating in a brainstorming exercise as a class they were able to recall many of the strategies that they had been taught. However, when asked to recall a time when they used a problem-solving or self-regulation strategy when they were struggling, they were only able to explicitly name the tried and true basic strategies such as "3 Deep Breaths" or "Count to 3," etc.
The action plan for the 2022-23 school year will be to explicitly teach and name SEL strategies that specifically relate to student problem-solving and self-regulation. We will also begin to apply SEL strategies to numeracy. We recognize that we are partners with our families in learning and will continue to share resources and strategies with our school community.
Our goal is to have our school engage in the following activities:
- Role playing in class
- Videos at school-wide (or primary/intermediate) assemblies
- Buddy class activities
- Discussions at staff meetings (whole school or grade group planning)
- Lessons in the Second Step digital program
- Having students record their thinking and reflections when working through challenging math problems
- Continued sharing of SEL resources and problem solving strategies at home through students sharing, digital portfolios, parent presentations, the weekly school blog, etc.
Surrey Schools
Formed in 1906, the Surrey School District currently has the largest student enrolment in British Columbia and is one of the few growing districts in the province. It is governed by a publicly elected board of seven trustees.
The district serves the cities of Surrey and White Rock and the rural area of Barnston Island.
