Effective SEL Teaching Practices and Strategies in Elementary Schools
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Virtual Learning Tip In the virtual environment, students may feel an additional need for agency and autonomy. Learning menus provide students with an opportunity to engage in the virtual classroom while making choices. Teachers can share these menus with both families and the students so there is a shared understanding of the students’ choices.
Connecting Multiple Practices to Deepen SEL In this chapter, we offered ten instructional practices that teachers can use to teach and integrate social-emotional skills into academics and throughout the school day. Instructional approaches to teaching SEL should be based on the current needs of the students and align to the instructional strengths of a teacher and with the classroom environment. So, let’s take a moment to think about what it would look like to pull multiple instructional practices together and plan for SEL instruction. Table 4.3 (page 218) provides a few examples of how a teacher might use and implement multiple SEL teaching practices and strategies within their classroom. Teachers may just start off focusing on one or two SEL practices and build in more practices and strategies over time. These practices may shift and change throughout the school year based on the needs of the students within the classroom. We suggest that teachers start off small, gradually build on what is working, and modify practices and strategies if needed.
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By embedding your SEL instructional practices into your day-to-day academics through these ten strategies, you will maximize your students’ access to SEL and increase their ability to generalize what they are learning throughout the school day. These strategies can either allow you to continue to teach your academic subjects without necessarily rearranging your day to add a separate SEL time frame, or enhance or support the existing current SEL curriculum you are using.
