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Building social-emotional skills through self-reflection

5/18/2020

6 Comments

 
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By JULIA BROACH

​Across the globe, many students are attending school through their computers, tablets, and phones. Educators have the demanding task of designing lessons on unfamiliar platforms, learning new remote assessment methods, and adjusting to a new style of teaching through a screen — all while not seeing or talking with students as often as before. 
 
Balancing teaching your curriculum with finding time to discuss with students what they are experiencing and how they are feeling can be challenging. Yet staying connected with them and what they are going through is essential in order to continue supporting them. Students are dealing with many significant life changes and a range of emotions brought on by these shifts — worrying about their own health and that of their family members and friends, feelings of loss about missed experiences, navigating a new form of learning, and being confined to their homes with their family members.      

Supporting self-reflection

Bringing low-tech self-reflection practices into online classrooms can be a helpful way to address the social-emotional needs of our students at this time. Developing social-emotional skills can help students better care for and advocate for themselves and others.

One way of incorporating at least a few minutes of self-reflection into lessons is by using social-emotional prompts (download a full set of our SEL prompts here). Our prompts are organized into several categories, drawn from the core social-emotional competencies identified by the educational research organization the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. Prompts fall into the following categories:

  • Decision-making: Making choices by reflecting on how they will impact you and those around you; thinking about the realistic outcome of actions when making choices.
 
  • Empathy (social awareness): Imagining perspectives outside of your own; recognizing the support and resources that exist in your community (family, school, neighborhood, etc.).
 
  • Relationships: Building and maintaining supportive and fulfilling relationships; being reflective of your relationships.
 
  • Self-awareness: Noticing and reflecting on your emotions and thoughts and what causes them to change; identifying how your emotions and thoughts affect how you act.
 
  • Self-care: Taking time to reflect on how you are feeling and taking actions to support your overall well-being.

Using these prompts with your students

These prompts can be sent out over email, posted on a class’s online feed, or shared aloud during a real-time class. Students can respond to them in a variety of ways — using no-tech (drawing or writing in a journal), low-tech (typing in a document, making a video recording, making an audio recording, taking photos), or high-tech options (posting responses to a shared classroom file, such as on Google Drive). 

Before using these in your classroom, give yourself time to engage in your own self-reflection practices (through these prompts or other means) — this will support you in more thoughtfully facilitating social-emotional learning exercises for others.

Take the time to  introduce the idea of the prompts to your students. You may contextualize the prompts by sharing that they’ll help with self-reflection during this strange period of self-isolation and remote learning. For students to fully express their answers, they may not be comfortable sharing any or all of their responses — determine what you think would be best for your students. There is still significant value in students responding to each prompt, even if they choose not to share with others. 

Below are a few ways that you can use these with your students in your online classes:

LOW-TECH
  • Daily/weekly reflections: Email or text your students a prompt every morning or once a week. Students can answer the prompts at home on their own time. If they would like to share them, they can respond to the email or text message with their responses in document or photo form. 
 
HIGH-TECH
  • Synchronous class: At the start of your video classes, read one of the prompts to students and post it on the class chat/feed. Give students 3-5 minutes to respond on their own at home. After the students finish, you can ask for volunteers to share their responses, or use the breakout room feature for students to share in small groups.   
 
  • Google Drive: For remote, asynchronous learning, post one prompt in the learning module for that day. Create a folder on Google Drive visible to only you and the student or visible to everyone in the class. Ask for students to respond to the prompt by the end of the day/week. In the folder, they can share some or all of their responses, such as a photo of a drawing or written response, videos, or audio recordings.
 
  • Flipgrid: Post one prompt to the learning module, and ask the students to record video responses and post them on your class Flipgrid page. With this platform, all of the students can see and respond to each other’s responses.   


TAGS: REMOTE LEARNING, RESOURCES, SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING
6 Comments
Suchitra
6/29/2020 06:59:18 am

Hello,

I tried multiple times to download the prompts but could not. It took me to a blank page that read "powered by Typeform".

Please can you send a different link.

Best,

Reply
CPET
6/29/2020 07:02:03 am

Hi Suchitra — you can download the set of these prompts at this link: https://tccpet.typeform.com/to/T10IsG.

Please give the page time to load (the text you're describing is what displays as the page is loading). I just attempted to download them a few moments ago, and everything is working!

Reply
Shefali Poojary link
10/29/2020 11:28:14 pm

Hello! Unable to download the prompts. I am stuck in a round about between these two pages.

https://cpet.tc.columbia.edu/news-press/building-social-emotional-skills-through-self-reflection

https://tccpet.typeform.com/to/T10IsG

Please help if possible.

Reply
CPET
10/30/2020 09:36:18 am

Hi Shefali,

Sorry that this is giving you trouble!

I'm not able to see anything odd with the request form, and I was able to download the prompts a few moments ago.

If the request form still isn't working for you, please send us an email at cpet@tc.edu, and we'll send you the prompts directly.

Thank you!

Reply
Kelly
11/24/2020 08:40:05 am

Hello! I just completed the request form for the prompts. The link that was emailed me doesn't work, any help would be appreciated! Thank you!

Reply
CPET
11/24/2020 08:48:26 am

Hi Kelly, thanks for reaching out! We just emailed you at the address you included on your request form. Please let us know if you continue to experience any trouble with the link!

Reply



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The Center for the Professional Education of Teachers (CPET) at Teachers College, Columbia University is devoted to advancing global capacities in teacher education, research, and whole school reform. CPET advocates for excellence and equity in education through direct service to youth and educators, innovative school projects, international research that examines and advocates the highest quality instructional and assessment practices today, and sustainable school partnerships that leverage current policy and mandates to raise literacy levels and embed collaborative communities of learning. Uniting theory and practice, CPET promotes rigorous and relevant scholarship and is committed to making excellent education accessible worldwide.
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