BY Greta McCue
Quashnet Elementary School (Mashpee)
Project Description
“Social and Emotional learning (SEL) is the process by which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.” from Dr. Nancy Boyles , Thinking Outside the box for Social and Emotional Learning.
Our goal is to use bibliotherapy (books) to teach children emotions and how they are relate to their thoughts and behaviors. The stories will be told in classrooms, supported by discussion and activities to learn about problem solving. Problem solving is the skill most missing when behavior is outside of typical behavior for an age.
How will the project be evaluated (e.g. how will you gauge its success)?
Evaluation will be mostly subjective by students themselves and their teachers. We may expect less office referrals and less needed intervention for behaviors.
Success will be evident as students increase their emotional /feelings vocabulary and usage. Happiness and well being are expected long term successes.
Benefit to the students and the school
Happier, healthier students, more connections among peers, more well adjusted children as they feel understood. A benefit to our school community would be understanding others and demonstrating empathy and problem solving skills, expanding our knowledge about others whose life experiences are different from our own. Expanding perspectives would develop students ability to understand and accept others and be understood.
Timeline of Project (when will you do the project, if applicable)
This project will be added to our SEL library, we will begin immediately and expect this to be curriculum based for each grade level.