Social–Emotional Learning

KidCitizen is an online resource that students can use to watch informative videos and episodes about political events, news, and also history. It helps them become more informed and interested in crucial political happenings as well as helping to spark ideas for how they can share their voices. Keep reading to learn more about using KidCitizen in the classroom.

Students have dealt with a slew of varying emotions and all-new stressors since learning went remote amid the pandemic and plenty are still working back from that. Infusing MakerEd tools into new types of instruction is one solution that could help children restore some of that emotional balance so they can keep learning, express ideas, and share feelings comfortably.

Starting with teaching skills like creative problem solving, persistence, and collaboration, merging these two key elements of education can really help students learn to enjoy the productive struggles they’ll likely face in a tech-driven world. So, we’re exploring how teachers can combine SEL, EdTech, and the right attitudes to help kids become well-rounded problem solvers.

Social-emotional learning is a process—and it’s arguably one that students never truly complete. Educators can, however, always help kids strengthen key emotional competencies and hands-on experiences in their classroom can play a large role, especially when they take part in STEAM or MakerEd initiatives that help them connect to their projects on an emotional level.

Access the full replay of our webinar with the Strawbees team, including all the noteworthy nuggets we shared about the versatile Strawbees invention kits, STEAM learning, and SEL. You’ll also learn about using the Strawbees hardware and content in SEL lessons, providing building materials for each student, and navigating Strawbees Classroom to extend STEAM projects.

The importance of SEL is highly touted and many educational leaders have created positions within their schools or districts to ensure that all students are appropriately managing and processing their various emotions. For this reason, we thought we’d take a look at the online social-emotional learning platform known as StrongMinded in this week’s Rising Resources post.

Quaver is a tech tool that helps provide students with a more well-rounded education experience (often captured through STEAM learning) with easily accessible tech-based resources. Their team has created a variety of SEL-focused lessons for this important area in today’s instruction and provided a unique way for educators to teach SEL skills through music education.

In addition to key STEM skills that students will likely need, they are going to need strong soft skills, like communication, collaboration, and listening, too. As such, the social-emotional aspect to teaching exposes kids to the process through which they acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary for managing emotions and building relationships.

Detailed planning and commitment are both essential in managing student learning loss as educators work to understand the pandemic’s impact. Not only are tons of students experiencing new, academic-related gaps, others still need a whole lot of social-emotional support. And, it’s our belief that in returning to social-emotional norms, we can truly help kids academically. 

Many teachers still hope to recapture normal instructional experiences and many of them have also taken on added responsibilities because of all new vacancies. And, though, in some districts, teachers have some official SEL guidelines to use, there aren’t concrete procedures in play in many others. So, if they choose to commit to SEL, they may be doing it on