This week I had the opportunity to explore some of the hottest topics in educational technology. This list was compiled by the International Society for Technology Education (ISTE). There were some pretty important points on this list, but the one that stood out to me the most was social emotional learning.
With the majority of students in the United States not attending school in person last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, now, more than ever, do we as educators need to support the overall wellbeing of our students. Just being back in the building for about a month now, I am seeing how much some students are struggling to cope socially and/or emotionally. For the majority of the students in my building, their positive outlet is school.
Second Step:
One tool that we use in my building to support students both socially and emotionally is the
Second Step program. This tool has been designed to be implement in both the elementary and middle school grade levels. We have been using this digital program since I have been at my building, which was seven years ago.
The lessons inside the middle school Second Step program cover the following topics:
- Mindset & Goals
- Recognizing Bullying and Harassment
- Thoughts, Emotions, and Decisions
- Managing Relationships & Social Conflict
These are important areas for my students because some of them do struggle to recognize what a good friendship looks like and how to manage how they are feeling on the inside. The Second Step program allows students to have positive discussions that allow them to share their feelings, thoughts, and emotions with a trusted adult in their life. It is important to remember that when working through these lessons, student participation in discussions should not be forced. Teachers should allow students to share when they feel they are ready and comfortable to do so.
What I do not enjoy about the program is that the only digital component is the teacher platform and lesson presentation. There is no digital component for students. I would love to see this program evolve to almost like a Pear Deck level where when shared with students, they can answer questions in real time. Teachers can use the information in the slides and create their own Pear Decks or even post it to Google Classroom to facilitate independent responses to a discussion question instead of all students sharing out there responses.
Another important part of the Second Step program is that there are videos embedded in many of the lessons that get the students to hear about the topic of the day from peers their age. This helps them to understand the topic at a kid friendly level and they see it is OK to talk about these things with their peers and teachers.
I will say that the Second Step program has afforded the students the opportunity to discuss topics that are not spoke about often in class. It allows them to share how they are feeling and seek out support when they are challenged socially or emotionally. With the majority of my students not in the building last year, they missed out on all this support. It is important that we as educators check in with our students emotionally after the taxing year and a half many of them have had.
Let's Check Out a Second Step Lesson!
Each Second Step lesson is broken down into 5 different sections.
- Warm-Up
- Generally this is where the video is embedded to get students thinking about this week's topic.
- Define
- Activity
- The website provides PDF files that can be printed as handouts or uploaded to Google Classroom for the students to complete.
- Discussion
- Wrap-Up
Resources:
To learn more about Social Emotional Learning and tools that can be implemented in your classrooms, check out these resources:
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