Morgan Elementary

At Morgan, our goal is to build community that supports the well-being of self and others through developing positive connections.

Our guiding question is: how are we intentionally and continually developing our own and our students’ emotional literacy skills?  

We explore our guiding question as a staff through regular and ongoing dialogue at our meetings and planning days. Together, we discuss and examine how to best support our learners by building strategies and resources to support their ongoing emotional literacy skills.

Very broadly, our students are learning to:

• use strategies that help them manage feelings and emotions
• take ownership of their goals, learning, and behaviour
• interact with peers peacefully and use problem-solving strategies for conflicts.

Our learners are engaging with their emotional literacy skills on a personal level, at the classroom level, and as a whole school community.

Emotional Literacy- Self

Our students are actively exploring their own feelings, asking themselves the questions:  How am I feeling today?  What is creating these feelings for me?  Do I need some strategies to help me feel calm or more centered?  What strategies can I use?

These skills are expressed through our provincial curriculum in many of the Curricular Competencies.  You will recognize these particular competencies in the examples below:

• Students can identify and describe feelings and worries, and strategies for dealing with them (Physical and Health Education, Grade 2)
• Students can identify and apply strategies that promote mental well-being (Physical and Health Education, Grade 2, 3)
• Students can share ideas, information, personal feelings, and knowledge with others (Career Education, Grade 1, 2, 3)

Our learners engage in a variety of techniques, tools and resources to help them with these self-regulation skills.                 

In this sample, we are seeing a class actively engaged in identifying and discussing how they are feeling by describing what “Zone” they are in.  This strategy comes from The Zones of Regulation.  This is a daily practice for these students.  When they enter the classroom each day, the place their name into one of the coloured zones which may indicate their state of alertness.  For example, the Blue Zone describes a low state of alertness and could be used to describe when a person feels tired, sick or sad.  Green is the ideal state of alertness with a person feeling content and calm.  Red is an extremely heightened state of alertness, and Yellow describes a person who may be experiencing feelings like stress, excitement, silliness or anxiety. During their morning meeting, these students have an opportunity to share why they selected their zone.

Some classes use different tools to help students engage with the questions:  How am I feeling?  Another tool commonly found at Morgan is the “Mood Meter” from the RULER program.

RULER is an acronym for the five skills of emotional intelligence:

• Recognizing emotions in oneself and others
• Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions
• Labeling emotions with a nuanced vocabulary
• Expressing emotions in accordance with cultural norms and social context
• Regulating emotions with helpful strategies

The Mood Meter works on a horizontal axis representing how pleasant/unpleasant we feel, and a vertical axis representing how much physical energy is running through our bodies. In the pictures below, we can see a Mood Meter where the teacher has helped learners to deepen their understanding by labelling the quadrants with some of the feeling words they might experience.

Here, we can see how the teacher has created empty Mood Meter Quadrants on the board.  This is commonly done in classrooms so that, when students enter in the morning, they can select their name on a magnet, consider and connect with how they are feeling, and place their name in the quadrant they feel suits them. 

And here, students have had the opportunity to do some written reflections about where they are on the Mood Meter and what strategies they may want to apply.

When our learners are able to identify how they are feeling, it opens the door for them to be able to strategize for those times that they recognize feelings of discomfort and unrest.  Our students may choose to ask for a brain break, engage in some deep breathing techniques, get a snack or drink some water.  Conversations about how to help ourselves become calm, alert and ready are common discussions in our classrooms.

In the picture below, you can see a “Calm Down Corner”.  This is an important space in the classroom that students can access when they identify that they are in need of strategies that can help create feelings of comfort and calm.  When a student arrives, the prompts on the board ask the learner: “How do you feel?  What can you do to feel better?”  If you look closely at the picture below, you can see a variety of tools and supports that the student can then access:  favourite books, playdough, sensory tools, and a stool that allows for movement.

Emotional Literacy- Classroom Community

Our learners are working and learning to build a safe, caring and respectful classroom community.  Teachers support students in creating a space where students take ownership of their goals, learning, and behaviour.  Together, they are developing a space where learners interact with peers peacefully, using problem-solving strategies for conflicts.

These skills are expressed through our provincial curriculum in many of the Curricular Competencies.  You will recognize these particular competencies in the examples below:

• Students can identify caring behaviours among classmates and within families (Physical and Health Education, Grade K, 1)
• Students can describe and apply strategies for developing and maintaining positive and healthy relationships (Physical and Health Education, Grade 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
• Students can describe and apply strategies that promote a safe and caring environment (Physical and Health Education, Grade 4, 5, 6)

Learners begin the year with their teachers building a Classroom Charter.  The Charter can be described as an expression of the values and norms of the class, and is created so that all may feel heard, safe and welcome. The Charter starts with the question ‘How do we want to feel at school?’ then, ‘How will we make sure to feel these feelings?’ and finally, ‘What will we do when there is conflict or unwanted feelings?’.

Each class builds their own unique Charter which is then signed by all students and teachers. Creating a charter is a collaborative experience, collectively made by the students.  It is rooted in their ideas creating a sense of shared ownership and accountability.

Teachers engage students in the Curricular Competencies to teach the skills that develop emotional literacy within the classroom community throughout the year.  This is through a variety of strategies such as written reflection, or possibly explicit lessons on perspective taking such as those provided by the Second Step or RULER program.  Two commonly taught strategies in the school are the Meta Moment and The Blueprint from the RULER program.

The Meta Moment allows a learner to step back from a situation so that they may pause and think before acting. We ask ourselves, how would my “best self” react in this situation? What strategy can I use so that my actions reflect my best self? This allows students to gradually replace ineffective responses with safe, empowering responses.

The Blueprint helps students develop a set of skills that allows them to manage conflict effectively. With the Blueprint, learners consider their own perspective and the perspective of the others involved, promoting the development and practice of empathy. Together, and with the help of an adult, students identify healthy solutions to conflicts.

Teachers also support emotional literacy within the classroom community through class meetings that organically (and intentionally) assist students in working through or celebrating real-life challenges or successes.

Below, are two examples of special celebratory class meetings.  In both examples, students recognize the importance of positive relationships in their lives, and demonstrate respect for differences in the classroom.

In the first example, Understanding and Celebrating Our Peers, the students have gathered to recognize the attributes of their peers.  Together, they are identifying caring behaviours among classmates, and appreciating the influence of their peers on their classroom community as they collectively choose an ‘award’ that will capture the positive contributions of their classmate.

In the second example, Acknowledgement Circle, students have gathered together to acknowledge the need for others who can support their learning and personal growth.  They acknowledge simple things, like appreciation for a treat, and big things like how they were included or experienced the support of a peer group in furthering their learning.  They raise their hands in the ways of our Indigenous people as a gesture of gratitude.

Emotional Literacy- School Community

Our learners are developing their emotional literacy to provide leadership and service in our school.  Successful student leaders demonstrate self-regulation, perspective-taking and problem-solving skills.  They model and support these skills for our younger students.

These skills are expressed through our provincial curriculum in many of the Curricular Competencies.  You will recognize these particular competencies in the examples below:

• Students can appreciate the importance of respect, inclusivity, and other positive behaviours in diverse, collaborative learning, and work environments (Career Education, Grade 6, 7)
• Students can demonstrate leadership skills through collaborative activities in the school and community (Career Education, Grade 6)
• Students can explore strategies for promoting the health and well-being of the school and community (Physical and Health Education, Grade 6)

There are many Student Leadership roles at Morgan including Lunch Monitors, Spirit Leaders and Library Monitors, etc.  One role that particularly taps into our students’ emotional literacy skills is our Bridging Buddies.  These intermediate students support our youngest students outside at recess and lunch.  They form a connection to these students (a bridge) by helping with play ideas, small conflicts, and safe play reminders.  They also ‘bridge’ to the adult supervisors as needed. On Wednesdays, our Bridging Buddies provide game opportunities to our primary students.

Our Grade 6 and 7 Leaders took their understanding of the Meta Moment this year to create a campaign promoting student respect of our shared spaces.  They applied what they learned about ‘seeing their best self’ to encourage others to pause and chose respect with “The Washroom Stall”.

Another Student Leadership role is Big Buddies on Call.  These student leaders promote the well-being of the school by providing service as needed to our youngest students.  They support our Kindergarten students at assemblies by sitting next to them and modelling how to be a school community member; they play board games with them during the lunch hour, showing them how to be responsible citizens in the classroom during the lunch hour; and they take them for body breaks, modelling how we access self-regulation strategies.

Our upper intermediate students promoted health and well-being, and collaborated with staff and our younger students in leading our Track Attack and Sports Day activities.  We are proud of our student leaders and recognize the many emotional literacy skills they are practicing in order to be successful in their roles.  Our learners, big and small, all benefit!