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How Technology and Social Emotional Learning Can Go Hand-in-hand

Imagine... standing at the entrance of a classroom feeling calm, yet full of energy at the same time. That’s how I feel when I go into the first grade class of Ms. Olson. It is clear through her classroom culture how much she cares about her students.  Students and teachers in Northwest ISD are exposed to Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). Since remote learning started and has remained in certain classes for the whole year, it has been imperative that teachers find ways to connect with their students no matter the obstacles they face. Technology and SEL were used effectively by Ms. Olson, so that students never felt left out of the learning environment. 

Let's take a look at what Ms. Olson had to say about how she incorporates technology and SEL into her classroom culture and daily routine. 

Fun Friday Check-ins

Virtual students do not get a lot of free time to interact with their peers, so at the end of each school day I allow my students a few minutes of “share time” to simply chat with their classmates.  Early on, I realized some students were monopolizing this time and not allowing all students to feel heard. To remedy this somewhat, I created a “Check-In Friday” Flipgrid group. Each Friday I present the students with a different, fun prompt for them to make a short response video for in Flipgrid.  Then, with the time they normally use for “share time” they are encouraged to go view and comment on their peers’ videos. Many great connections have been made this way because they are able to learn about each other & find similarities.

 

What zone are you in today with feedback and questions

When everyone was remote, our team altered a quick Seesaw attendance activity to fit our SEL needs. As the lone remote teacher for the grade level, I have kept it up every day! My daily Seesaw attendance activity is a multi-purposeful activity.  It helps me keep track of student presence/attendance in Seesaw for the day. Possibly more importantly though, it tells me how students are feeling and the emotional state they are starting their day in. At Peterson we have learned a lot about the Zones of Regulation. Each day students drag their “mustang icon” to the zone they feel like they are in each morning. Green means they are happy and ready to learn. However, if students drag their icon to blue, yellow, or red it means they are feeling off for some reason that day.  This gives me the opportunity to comment and ask why they may be feeling a certain way & how they’re going to try to move themselves into the green zone.  The personal feedback and attention alone, is sometimes enough to help make their day a little better. The activity opens up communication, helps students learn more about self-regulation, and makes me aware of anything that needs my attention: all in about 30 seconds! 

Filling Buckets with Compliments

For special occasions (and sometimes for none at all!), I like to let my students interact in ways out of our routine. One of my favorite things to do is to have them compliment each other.  They’ve had the opportunity to do this several times throughout the year. At Christmas my room mom spent time in our zoom having each student compliment the others and creating ornaments for them.  I wanted to find a way to do something similar for Valentine’s Day, except digitally! I ended up Using Jamboard! I used fun valentines jar images and put each student’s name on a different one, creating several pages on 1 Jamboard. Students then had the opportunity to go write a compliment on each page, for each classmate.  When they were done, students had a Valentines card with a sweet message from all of their classmates. It was fun for them to realize that even in zoom, they are noticed and admired. We’ve done similar activities since!

Brag Tags- Positive Reinforcement 

I am a firm believer in positive reinforcement in the classroom.  As a primary teacher, though, this is usually played out with tangible rewards.  I thought about how I could transfer this belief into my digital classroom.  I had previously used brag tag cards with students.  I decided these would be the best option for remote learners. My students earn digital brag tags for all sorts of occasions.  We have weekly goals that range from zoom manners to remembering to use conventions. They earn brag tags for winning kahoot games, jumping up Lexia levels, participation, holidays, etc.  Their brag tags are housed in Seesaw and the images are simply cut and pasted or uploaded into the post. Once students fill up a brag tag page they earn a special prize that I drop at their doorstep after school. Students have really taken to this system and the motivation to earn the brag tags may be just as strong as it is to earn the prize! 

In all classrooms, students should leave with a sense of uplifted pride in themselves. The way Ms. Olson uses technology and Social Emotional Learning to help her students fill their buckets is remarkable. Everyone needs someone in their life to believe in them, these kids at Peterson Elementary have that in Ms. Olson!

Warning... #Slackers Ahead

Sometimes the words "Professional Development" can make you cringe -- especially when you mix those words with summer!  However, those were not the sentiments of the dual-language team in Northwest ISD.  This summer they decided to take on the challenge of meeting the needs of #EveryChildEveryDay by becoming #Slackers.  No, they did not wait until the last minute to start preparing for the upcoming school year.  Rather, they dove into intellectually collaborative conversations using a tool called Slack to discuss their practice of educating bilingual students, which worked to strengthen their professional learning community (PLC) across the district.

Slack is a collaborative messaging service that allows teams to meet virtually and gives teams the ability to share a variety of digital products in one online space. Teams can organize their discussions into both channels and threads to maintain productive conversations on a plethora of topics.

It all started when Señora Katia Ramón Pino had the idea to connect the dual-language teachers all across NISD. Understanding the importance of learning from one another through sharing personal experiences and the power to learn from literature, she began looking for the best avenue to virtually connect educators. While collaborating, initially she thought a Twitter chat would work best, but she wanted the conversation to feel more like a live discussion with the ability to share out any medium to express their thoughts. Eventually, she landed on Slack as the ideal platform to meet their needs because discussion questions could be posed and message threads could carry the conversations to deeper levels. Additionally, the ability to create new channels to focus learning was a priceless feature as this method of meeting is planned to continue throughout the entire school year.

Our district's frame of thinking is meeting the needs of #EveryChildEveryDay. This group of educators exemplifies this mantra as they are discussing with one another best practices to try with their students. At times, being a dual-language teacher can feel isolating as you are the only member of your grade-level team that does what you do. However, with the use of Slack to build and strengthen this PLC, the teachers are able to communicate and collaborate with one another to make every child successful. Slack helped meet the purpose of this PLC because teachers across the district feel empowered by their colleagues to continue being lifelong learners, both from one another and literature, to gain the knowledge of how to help their students grow.

There is definitely no room on this team for a slacker as everyone contributes their expertise and strengths. With all the prework these #Slackers did over the summer building the toolkits of one another, the possibilities are endless when it comes to trying new strategies with their students to help them be successful in their learning environment.

"If I could learn about anything in the world, I would learn about...."

Walking into Mrs. Dwyer’s first grade classroom to find they were working on their passion projects, made my heart smile! First graders planning, researching, and creating a product to show off their learning about their self-selected passion is a dream come true. Passion projects are a way of investing in each child by naturally differentiating because the whole process and product is about them.

Read more to find out what Mrs. Dwyer, a teacher at Schluter Elementary had to say about launching passion projects in 1st grade:

I was determined to bring passion projects to life despite the differences in age and independence. It was important to me to engage them in relevant work that inspired them. I never want to limit my students, especially their beliefs about themselves. Back in October, I finally got brave enough to voice my vision aloud to one of my mentors, Liz Smith, GATES teacher. She came alongside me, helped me launch the project and pitch it to my kids to get their buy-in. We got down on the floor together and conferred with kids, to understand their passion, listen to them, and help them struggle to find their voice.

Time was always a constraint. I put two 15-30 minute blocks of time on the calendar each week to work on passion projects, and I accepted that life happens. If it didn’t work one day, one week or even one month, we just picked up where we left off when we could. Mrs. Smith pushed in the classroom when she could, and a few times we would divide and conquer. I would teach small groups while she conferred. Overall, we maintained flexibility.

In the planning process, students chose how they would share their learning and what product they would create. When we finally got to that stage, it got even more fun. It was also a dance, going back and forth between guiding and allowing student-independence. For example, one student would decide on making a video. The next student automatically wanted a video to be like a peer. We had to spend time talking about purpose and audience to help kids understand that a video may not be the best fit for every project. I thought I would get tears, but I did not. I think they felt so empowered, they would nod and say, “Maybe on my next project.”

There were a few projects where we had to get parent involvement in order for it to be a success for the student. Talk about engagement! I actually received an email from a parent, thanking me for the project because she saw her daughter light up in the process. Media was following her around with cameras thinking she was a big time YouTuber. I ran into another family at the indoor soccer fields, and it was awesome because I “caught” my student working on his passion. He was so proud! Another student, who wanted to learn all about ballet, came back to school in January excited because her mom agreed to sign her up for ballet class.

It fills me with so much joy to see how far my kids have come in this process. The difficult parts for me of managing 20 individual projects, scaffolding, and differentiating for each child, and mostly understanding exactly what they wanted to be the outcome of their work, were more than worth it. It was a definite growing experience for me as an educator. We can’t wait to share the finished products at EXPO and Open House. We are hopeful to get another project in before the end of the year now that we, as a class, have more skills and practice!

As you can see, Mrs. Dwyer and her students both gained substantial knowledge during this experience. Schluter Elementary set a goal at the beginning of the year as a campus for each student to take ownership of their learning process in planning, monitoring, and reflecting on individual and/or collective work in order to meet their highest potential. This learning definitely showcases the students ownership of their learning process and what high potential they each have. Check out all of Mrs. Dwyer’s students learning here.