Strategies and Routines

Dear educators,

The beginning of the school year can be a challenging transition for certain students, so supporting the social and emotional needs of your students will be crucial for your year to be successful. Here are some useful strategies and routines I have implemented in my own classroom. I hope you will find them useful! Good luck!

Ms. Silvia


Strategies to use SEL in your daily routines:

1. Get to know your students. Who are they? What do they like? How do they learn? What languages do they speak? Where are they from? Find out more about their identity. Harvey "Smokey" Daniels in his book "The Curious Classroom" states that "You are not ready to teach a child until you know ten things about her life outside of school."

Edutopia has wonderful videos with examples of strategies to embed in the daily routine. The one below is just an example. 

VALUE YOUR STUDENTS!


Useful strategies:

a) Question of the day - Before you start your morning meeting, ask them a "question of the day". You can use different kinds of questions to get to know more about your students' personal lives, feelings, academics, or likes and dislikes. I have been using Google Chat for this purpose.

b) Soft Start: Start your day "softly"! As students come to your classroom/Zoom meetings, offer them a 5 minute quiet time. They can meditate, draw, read, rest, listen to music, watch a video, etc. 

c) Morning Meetings: Use morning meetings to develop or maintain the social and emotional skills. Here is an article about the benefits of incorporating morning meetings in your daily routine.

d) Energizers: Include small breaks and energizers during the day. I include a  5 minute break to use the bathroom, drink water, or dance before each academic block. GoNoodle is a wonderful resource for energizers. 

e) Closing Circle: At the end of the day, get together as a group and reflect about the day. There are different ways to reflect together. I have used Jamboard as a resource to reflect as a group. Sometimes I ask my students to draw a picture instead of speaking. At the end of the closing circle we share our pictures. Here is an article about closing circle.

2. Get to know the families - Home visits, Meet The Teacher Day, and Family Fun Nights , and Family Message Journals are wonderful ways to connect families to the school. 

3. Identity Web - Have students create identity webs at the beginning of the school year. See my example below. Hybrid/Virtual - Use Google Drawing or Jamboard to create one. 

3rd grader Identity Web in Portuguese.

4. Birthday Cluster Activity - In the first week of school my students interviewed each other about their birthdays. I created a poster with their birthdays and posted next to my calendar. Seeing the clusters has been helping me to identify their age differences. See my example below. Hybrid/Virtual - Post on Google Classroom and celebrate students' birthdays during morning meeting. Students can also make virtual cards or record messages on Flipgrid.

Make sure students have clear expectations about what they need to do and how they are expected to behave in the school community. During the first 6 weeks of school, my students engage in a unit titled "Who We Are". Together we learn that "The Choices We Make Affect Our Growth And Well Being". Throughout the unit, we create our "Essential Agreements" for the school community and we also reflect on our "Hopes & Goals" for the new school year. Students are aware of my expectations for each part of the day. Finally, we discuss logical consequences in case they are not following those expectations. See the pictures below and please share some of your ideas so I can add to this page!

5. Essential Agreements (Classroom Rules): Create the classroom rules together. Hybrid/Virtual - Post on Google Classroom.

3rd grade 2020/2021 Essential Agreements.

3rd grade 2019/2020 Essential Agreements.

6. Independent Reading Expectations:

Ms. Brooke's (3rd grade English Teacher at ICS)
reading expectations.

My reading expectations in Portuguese.

7. Logical Consequences if they do not follow the Essential Agreements: Students discuss with teacher and classmates about the consequences of not following the essential agreements in the school community.

Ms. Brooke's list of logical consequences with examples.

8. Reflection: Students reflect on their behavior when they take a positive time-out. I usually have a specific area in my classroom where students can take a break. In this area, I include reflection journals, stress balls, stuffed animals, and drawing paper and markers. Students usually choose something to help them to calm down.

9. Movement breaks - During the school day, students will use movement breaks to help them to focus academically. Please read this article to find out more about the benefits of physical activities for your students.

10. Yoga and meditation - I use either one of these practices before each lesson I teach. A couple of minutes here and a couple of minutes there do make a difference in my students' behavior. I also have a discussion with the group to make them aware of the importance to be balanced in order to learn better. This article includes important information about the benefits of meditation.

The strategies above are only a few I use in my classroom. How about you? What have you been doing to include SEL in your daily routine? You will find other useful resources if you click on the links below. Enjoy!

1. SEL strategies - EDUTOPIA

2. Seven Social-Emotional Teaching Strategies - Transition Kindergarten California

3. Responsive Classroom Printables

4. Responsive Classroom - First weeks of school videos

5. 21 ways to integrate social and emotional learning in your classroom

My 3rd graders working on their "Sharing the Planet"
end-of-unit summative assessment in 2018/2019