12 minute read
9. Teachable Moments
Virtual Learning Tip
Ongoing SEL projects can be assigned in the virtual environment as well, encouraging students to become creative when they are away from the screen. This can be an opportunity to encourage them to build their relationships with their families.
Maria’s class came to gather for morning meeting, but as they sat down, the circle they made was not big enough for Daniel to fit. Maria inwardly groaned, knowing that this small problem could set Daniel’s day on the wrong foot. Suddenly, she had an idea.
“Hmmm . . .” she said, modeling thinking aloud. “I notice that there is not enough room for everyone on the carpet. I notice that Daniel is still coming to join us but there is not enough room for him.” As the class glanced around at each other, Maria turned to Daniel. “Daniel, when you walk over here, I wonder what you can do? First, I bet you can look at the circle and see where there might be room for someone to move. It looks like there is room between Imron and Sally. Do you think you could tap Imron on the shoulder and ask if he can scoot over?” Daniel looked confused by this, as he normally pushes his way into the circle, causing yelling and complaining from the other students. Imron turned to look at him and nodded, preferring this idea to being pushed. Maria continued, “Daniel, let’s try. Carefully walk up to Imron and put out one finger. Yes, just like that. OK, now tap him lightly on the shoulder. You can say quietly, ‘Can you move over?’” Maria coached Daniel through asking for space on the carpet and waited patiently while the class all shifted their positions so that Daniel had room. Once everyone was situated, Maria turned to her class and said, “Wow, you all were problem solvers today. We had a problem—there was not enough room for everyone—and you worked together to solve it. Daniel, you did a great job recognizing there was a problem and calmly finding a solution.” Daniel, clearly proud of this, beamed. “Now,” Maria continued, “we are ready to begin morning meeting. Make sure your eyes are on me!”
To herself, Maria laughed. That could have been a disaster! she thought. In the moment, it felt like it took an hour to get everyone situated, but it was only about ninety seconds. If I’d let them work it out themselves, or if I had just told Imron to move over, there still would have been pushing, and in the end I would have given up a lot more time than ninety seconds—only to repeat the same chaos tomorrow. Hopefully, now that they feel ownership of this problem-solving routine, they will try it out again tomorrow!
Leading experts and researchers in the field of SEL (Greenberg et al., 2017) share that educators should not only teach social-emotional skills, but they also model them and provide students with opportunities to practice and apply these skills throughout the school day in various settings and situations. Although we often carefully plan our specific SEL lessons, true learning moments happen throughout the day, whether we plan for them or not. These are moments we can use to support our students’ SEL development. At times, taking advantage of these moments may require spontaneous responses to a situation that arises in our classroom, or pausing from a lesson to address a social-emotional need, but often allowing for this spontaneity means that the real learning can occur.
We have placed these teachable-moment strategies into three categories: (1) teacher modeling, (2) student modeling, and (3) student problem solving. In figure 4.32 you will note some of the specific strategies you can implement during your day to respond to students’ needs.
Teacher Modeling
Narrating Thinking Aloud Self-Talk Positive Feedback
Student Modeling
Role Play Moment Modeling & Persistent Practice
Teachable Moment Strategies Student Problem Solving
Brainstorming Solutions Inquiry-Based Problem Solving
Figure 4.32: Teachable moment strategies.
As teachers, we know that we almost always have students’ eyes on us throughout the day, even when we are trying to take a moment to ourselves. One way to reinforce social-emotional learning is to outwardly model applying those SEL strategies yourself. Students are far more likely to learn from watching you than they are from being told what to do.
This can happen in little moments. Imagine trying to start a lesson, but you cannot find a dry-erase marker that is not dried out. Say that aloud to the class—a strategy called narrating aloud. “Man, this is frustrating. All of these markers are dried out!
Every time I think ‘OK, here is one that will work,’ I find another one that does not work. I’m getting so frustrated. I’d better take a deep breath. I’m going to take a sip from my water bottle and think about a backup plan. Oh! Now I remember! I have other markers in the cabinet.” While this sounds like a lot of talking in front of the class, it fills the time when you are looking for the marker (when students are likely to become off-task anyway) and models how you identify your emotion, use a calm-down strategy, and problem solve. This strategy also builds your relationship with the students because you are sharing your real-life secret: that you are human, just like them.
Narrating your thoughts aloud models two strategies we want the students to apply. It shows how adults identify their own emotions and then use self-talk to walk themselves through a problem. This can happen in both academic and social situations. In academics, this may look like showing a mathematics problem on the board and saying, “Wow, I wonder how I should start this. What if I . . .” In academic settings, this type of modeling during lessons can be planned ahead of time.
Thinking aloud can also take the form of narrating, or noticing and naming what you observe students doing well (Johnston, 2004). This is particularly helpful when you notice students making positive choices, using their SEL skills, applying a growth mindset, or using self-regulating strategies. For some students this may come in the form of a private comment like, “Carlos, I notice you worked through that problem even when you were frustrated. Nice job getting a drink of water and then coming back to work.” It can also be addressed to the whole class: “I notice there are students who are carefully checking their work before handing it in. I know I like to get work finished quickly and it is hard to pause and take time to look at my work. That takes self-control.” Be careful when you are providing positive feedback to students that you are not publicly calling on the same student over and over again (Denton, 2007). Attempt to keep your observations broad and address what you notice the whole class doing. Some students may not want verbal positive feedback. In these cases, you can develop a secret signal to give them when they are showing these skills, or even write the compliment on a sticky note so they can read it later.
Utilizing this thinking aloud strategy may particularly help the areas of social awareness and reciprocal engagement. Some students who have difficulty with social awareness or maintaining a back-and-forth engagement with another person may benefit the most from being able to hear someone else’s thoughts. To support reading social cues, the teacher models playing a new partner game. She may narrate, “I’m excited to play this partner game! First, I’m going to look at my partner’s face. He looks really excited. I hope he doesn’t want to go first because I want to go first. He is already holding the dice. I’d better ask him. Diego, do you want to go first because I want to go first. What should we do?” A teacher supporting extending reciprocal engagement may model having a fake conversation with someone and midconversation say “I’m thinking I need to go to the bathroom, and I am bored. Should I say that? Hmm . . . no, I’ll answer his question first, and then say, ‘excuse me’ before I tell him I need to go to the bathroom.”
Student Modeling: Role Play, Modeling in the Moment, and Persistent Practice
Having students model and practice using their SEL skills is necessary so that students are able to learn and apply the strategies. As we talked about in previous sections of this book, fully developing executive functioning and self-regulation strategies involves a motor (movement) component along with the cognitive component (Lillas & Turnbull, 2009). This can take on a variety of forms in the classroom.
In the beginning of the year or after longer breaks, it is beneficial to have students model and practice the rules and routines you expect them to follow. Ask them to go through the routine themselves and provide positive feedback of what they are doing. I (Ann-Bailey) often feel as though I am an announcer for a little-known Olympic sport: “Look how they carefully push in their chairs and come to the rug. I notice no one is going to the water fountain or trying to sharpen a pencil. They are walking directly to the carpet. I don’t even hear their footsteps. I see that they want to talk to each other, but they don’t! Look at that self-control!” After labeling what you observe, ask the students to label what they noticed the peer models doing.
A role play strategy, sometimes referred to as a fishbowl activity, can also be used when students are learning a new partner game, learning to use new classroom materials appropriately, or learning prosocial skills such as how to get someone’s attention, how to ask for help, what to do if you accidentally spill something, or what to do after a classmate pushes you. Ask the students role playing to sit in the center or front of the group with the rest of the class sitting around them observing (as though in a glass fishbowl). Give the observing students the job of labeling what they notice is occurring inside the fishbowl. During this time, the teacher can act as the facilitator of the learning, by asking the students who are modeling to pause, and pose reflective questions to the group, or highlight important things that are happening with the student models.
Student modeling or role play can also be used to problem solve as a group. Assign students to small groups and give them a problem the class may be familiar with (for example, there are not enough glue sticks for each person to have one, it is too loud during indoor recess, or the basketball game at recess is becoming too competitive). Give the groups opportunities to generate possible solutions, and then ask them to create a skit using their solution. Bring the group back together and have them model the solutions for one another. This will reinforce the idea that there are multiple ways to solve a problem and will let more students have an opportunity to practice the solution through movement.
The strategy of student modeling and practicing can also be effective when done in the moment. After a student or the class makes a mistake, the teacher may want to ask them to model using a strategy the right way. This can be as simple as saying “Show me how you walk in the halls,” or, “That was a lot of noise! Let’s pause, take a breath, and try that again. This time look at your friend’s face. What do you notice? He looks
pretty upset that you took the marker from his hand. Show us how you can ask for the marker without making him upset.” During these in-the-moment modeling and practice sessions, it is essential to keep your teacher emotions in check. Use a calm, neutral voice to show that we are all learning and that this is a part of the learning process.
This strategy can be especially helpful to bring a noisy or chaotic group of students back together, regulate them, and send them back to work. Bring the students to the gathering area and in a calm, low voice, let them know that they need to practice that transition. “We are a loud and active group today! Let’s do some of our breathing exercises before we get back to work. We have a lot of high energy right now, and we need to lower that energy if we are going to do our independent reading.” After walking through the regulating exercise, one by one, ask the students to model moving quietly to their workspace. Keep your voice calm and encouraging, and provide positive feedback as needed. Be sure to later reinforce what you did as a group to regain calm: “You all did a great job this afternoon during independent reading. We all started off as a bit crazy but once we recognized that we had too much energy to work we were able to use our strategies to calm down and accomplish our goal of a quiet independent reading block. Nicely done. That is not always easy.”
Guided Student Problem Solving
As educators, we can support students’ social-emotional development, particularly in the blocks of social-emotional regulation and logical and responsible decision making, by giving them the opportunity to solve problems themselves in a supported environment. This may look like holding a whole-group discussion to look at all sides of a question in an academic context like, “Should we, the American colonists, tell the British king we want to be our own country, or should we try to work it out and stay a part of Britain?” Teachers can also pose inquiry-based questions and facilitate discussions around historical injustices as well as real-world current events and inequities that impact students and their communities.
It can also be used as a way to solve real problems occurring in the classroom. One year I (Ann-Bailey) had a very active first-grade class. At one point in the year, I brought up to the class that the room arrangement was not working and asked them what they saw as some of the problems. We held this discussion in both whole and small groups to identify exactly what was not working about our room setup and how we could fix it. Being first graders, they had very elaborate ideas to fix some of the simpler problems, but in the end, we did end up with a room that flowed better for our specific needs (and had engaged in a powerful SEL opportunity).
When engaging students in these brainstorming problem-solving discussions, be sure to use the strategy listed previously of narrating your thoughts and observations about the process (see page 211). These are the moments where students may feel genuine frustration with the problem or each other. This is an excellent time to provide meaningful, in-the-moment positive feedback as students grapple with the problem at hand. Honor
