SEL - Part II

SEL refers to the acquisition of skills for students to:

1. Recognise and manage emotions
2. Develop care and concern for others
3. Make responsible decisions
4. Establish positive relationships
5. Handle challenging situations effectively

Self-Awareness

• What am I feeling physically and emotionally?
• Why am I feeling this way?

Relationship Management

• Communication
• Relationship building
• Negotiation
• Refusal

Students see disagreements as conflicts. This provides the opportunity for us to demonstrate how to resolve conflicts through negotiation. Anticipate, discuss and address rather than escalate.

Sustained listening is the bedrock to building perspective taking skills. Posture of interest and open-ness is expected - part of respect. Ask clarifying questions with the objective to understand. Reflect on what they have heard - don't make assumptions.

Responsible Decision Making

• Problem solving
• Analysing situation
• Assuming personal responsibility
• Respecting others 

What are you feeling today?

Cognitive - e.g. overwhelmed

Physical - e.g. tired

Feeling - e.g. happy

R - Recognise

U - Understand: emotional honesty - link the emotion to the context

L - Label (Do the students have the emotional vocabulary?)

E - Express (could be through journaling)
R - Regulate (emotional stamp collection, the more you collect, the more extensive the outburst) [Last resort]

There are no RIGHT feelings. It is a state that informs.

Must emphasise need for self-care.

Fundamentals of Character Development

Characters and Citizenship Education is one of the key directions the educational landscape is moving to. Going through a workshop that talks about the principles (and not the precepts) couldn't be more apt!

Developing SEL skill sets
Self-awareness (can only be developed through reflections) --> Self-management (only then can you manage what you know) --> Interaction with others (Social Awareness - Stop and Look with Interest, Observe, Listen / Clarify, Respond with Empathy) --> Do we have the skills to respond? (Relationship Management) --> Responsible Decision Making affects not only self but also others and the wider community.

Compassion --> Social Awareness + Relationship Management
Integrity --> Self-Management + Responsible Decision Making + Self-Awareness

Character Development = Skills + Values go hand in hand!

SEL Skills --> HOW --> Learnt through observation (culture)
Values --> WHY

Values without skills --> Not efficacious.

Pedagogical Principles

1. Action
2. Relevance
3. Providing for social dimension
4. Providing for emotional dimension
5. Reflection

How to make friends - Making it SAFE (sequential, active, focused, explicit)

Identify skills --> Explain

Process --> Demo

Procedural steps (Active) --> Practise

Feedback / Celebrate --> Promote

One of the main concerns we face - if we have to teach SEL skills explicitly, where do we find the time??

TimeToast - Drawing a Timeline to Document Key Events in Chinese Cinderella

Came across this tool called TimeToast, that allows users to create events that appear in a timeline. Thought that before I start the unit on Chinese Cinderella, it might be useful for the students to note down the important events that happened to Adeline. These are examples of what the girls did: This is helpful to check if the girls have read the book closely and also gives them the opportunity to know the key events.

Quote from Percy Jackson

Was reading Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse (2008, Puffin) and came across this paragraph on p.148.

Apollo sighed. 'You might as well ask an artist to explain his art, or ask a poet to explain his poem. It defeats the purpose. The meaning in only clear through the search.'

I think I will share this with my girls when we commence the poetry unit in late Term 3!

TitanPad - Writing Descriptions

I have heard about TitanPad for the longest time and as the girls have not received their devices, I brought them to the Green Lab for an exercise on writing descriptions. This is an example of what they did: As the girls were still getting used to the platform, I didn't manage to get them all to give one another feedback on the platform because its beauty lies in that different users can give their comments and edit and they would be reflected in another colour. How cool is that?! But I managed to get them to give feedback through another means.

Google Spreadsheet - Quick Analysis + Evaluation

It is the first week for the Secondary One students in my school. To slowly get them into the scheme of things like using ICT for learning, I got them into groups of fours to analyse another group's "spiced up" version of a sentence they have picked out of a box. The objectives of the lesson were to:

1. Pick out how the sentence has been "spiced up" with adjectives, adverbs or even a change of verb.
2. Evaluate that group's "spiced up" sentence in terms of its effectiveness in creating a mental image of the moment being described.

Here's an image of what they did.

A quick analysis and evaluation of an "improved" sentence

Reflections of Staff Seminar Dec 2012

Commencement Speech "You are not special"

Our principal shared this during the year-end seminar and the messages that resonated most with me were:

1. If everyone is special, no one is. (This sets me thinking that with the announcement in September that all local schools are good schools, then this would imply that no schools are good right? Haha, am I thinking too much?)
2. Love your work and believe in it. 
3. Avoid self satisfaction. This means we should not get complacent. Things could always be done in a better way.
4. Think about the more important things. The thing is, do we know which things are important?
5. Climb a mountain so that you can see the world and not for the world to see you. (I love this as the perspective with which we look at things do shape the way we do things. Linked to item 4)

These shall guide me for 2013 and I look forward to an amazing 2013!