BY Sarah Floyd
Peebles Elementary School
Project Description
The goal of this project is to purchase materials to support social emotional learning. We hope to increase academic achievement by supporting students with behavioral challenges and also promote a school wide positive behavior plan.
How will the project be evaluated (e.g. how will you gauge its success)
The project will be evaluated in several ways. We will document how many times children are visiting the newly created “Kids Kope Korner” in the library. This section of the library will house the books on social emotional learning. There will be various titles on topics such as, friendship, books on manners, books on making good choices, etc. The Social Worker will use these materials with a “lunch bunch” group (these students are selected based on academic and behavioral needs). The health teacher will use some of the books for read-alouds in her classroom. We will also see if the number of discipline referrals to the principal lowers after we begin implementing these materials and lessons school wide.
Benefit to the students and the school
We have researched various books that would align and enhance our current SEL curriculum and feel they would positively impact the children in our school. The books could be used in a variety of ways by various teachers and staff in the building such as the librarian, adjustment counselor, health and wellness teacher as well as the classroom teachers. For example, the health class teacher will use puppetry to “role play” the situations depicted in the books. Social Emotional Learning is critical component to any curriculum to support the varied needs of our students. Research shows that SEL not only improves achievement by an average of 11 percentile points, but it also increases prosocial behaviors (such as kindness, sharing, and empathy), improves student attitudes toward school, and reduces depression and stress among students (Durlak et al., 2011).
Timeline of Project (when will you do the project, if applicable)
The project is just beginning and will be ongoing.