Impact on Student Learning
Before action research was implemented, students were struggling to build connections to peers and address emotions or show empathy for their peers. Students lacked self-regulation skills that they need when they address problems or finding solutions to conflict. After social-emotional learning was implemented during our morning meeting, students were able to enact self-regulation skills and utilize strategies to build stronger peer relationships. Students began to start working with peers that they were not able to talk to previously without fighting or arguing. When students were having conflict, they had the confidence to not only address it with their peers by voicing their feeling without yelling, but also gained the confidence to tell the teacher before it escalated to yelling or fighting.
Students started with a pre- baseline on how they were feeling at home, school, and with peers. As weekly check-ins continued on, students showed higher attitudes and feelings about themselves and their peers.
Impact on Current Teaching
During implementation of action research, my teaching constantly changed and evolved. I considered a theme for each week over previously identified social-emotional skills that were impacting their peer interactions. However, as I monitored student interactions during instruction and outside of instruction, I would adjust my plan and adjust instruction. For example, Sanford Harmony lessons are scripted and follow a certain structure. I noticed that students were not connecting to materials as expected. Their behaviors would slightly decrease, but by the end of the day they were not able to build strong connections from content to actions. I altered how the content was given by taking the lessons from Sanford Harmony and combining them with my own connections and statistics. Student behavior would decrease twice as much as the previous days with Sanford Harmony’s scripted lessons. By understanding the importance students needed for real life connections and examples, they were able to connect to the lessons Sanford Harmony have and meet their social-emotional needs.
Impact on Student Learning
Before action research was implemented, students were struggling to build connections to peers and address emotions or show empathy for their peers. Students lacked self-regulation skills that they need when they address problems or finding solutions to conflict. After social-emotional learning was implemented during our morning meeting, students were able to enact self-regulation skills and utilize strategies to build stronger peer relationships. Students began to start working with peers that they were not able to talk to previously without fighting or arguing. When students were having conflict, they had the confidence to not only address it with their peers by voicing their feeling without yelling, but also gained the confidence to tell the teacher before it escalated to yelling or fighting.
Students started with a pre- baseline on how they were feeling at home, school, and with peers. As weekly check-ins continued on, students showed higher attitudes and feelings about themselves and their peers.
Impact on Current Teaching
During implementation of action research, my teaching constantly changed and evolved. I considered a theme for each week over previously identified social-emotional skills that were impacting their peer interactions. However, as I monitored student interactions during instruction and outside of instruction, I would adjust my plan and adjust instruction. For example, Sanford Harmony lessons are scripted and follow a certain structure. I noticed that students were not connecting to materials as expected. Their behaviors would slightly decrease, but by the end of the day they were not able to build strong connections from content to actions. I altered how the content was given by taking the lessons from Sanford Harmony and combining them with my own connections and statistics. Student behavior would decrease twice as much as the previous days with Sanford Harmony’s scripted lessons. By understanding the importance students needed for real life connections and examples, they were able to connect to the lessons Sanford Harmony have and meet their social-emotional needs.
Impact on Student Learning
Before action research was implemented, students were struggling to build connections to peers and address emotions or show empathy for their peers. Students lacked self-regulation skills that they needed to address problems or finding solutions to conflict. After social-emotional learning was implemented during our social circle, students were able to enact self-regulation skills and utilize strategies to build stronger peer relationships. Students began to start working with peers that they were not able to talk to previously without fighting or arguing. When students were having conflict, they had the confidence to not only address it with their peers by voicing their feeling without yelling, but also gained the confidence to tell the teacher before it escalated to yelling or fighting.
Students started with a pre-baseline on how they were feeling at home, school, and with peers. As weekly check-ins continued, students showed higher attitudes and feelings about themselves and their peers.
Impact on Current Teaching
During implementation of action research, my teaching constantly changed and evolved. I considered a theme for each week over previously identified social-emotional skills that were impacting their peer interactions. However, as I monitored student interactions during instruction and outside of instruction, I would adjust my plan and adjust instruction. For example, Sanford Harmony lessons are scripted and follow a certain structure. I noticed that students were not connecting to materials as expected. Their behaviors would slightly decrease, but by the end of the day they were not able to build strong connections from content to actions. I altered how the content was given by taking the lessons from Sanford Harmony and combining them with my own connections and statistics. Student behavior would decrease twice as much as the previous days with Sanford Harmony’s scripted lessons. By understanding the importance students needed for real life connections and examples, they were able to connect to the lessons Sanford Harmony have and meet their social-emotional needs.
Impact on Professional Growth
Action research has opened my mind to challenge myself and utilize the multitude of professional resources available in my first year teaching. Before action research project began, I did not know how to use these resources to benefit my students. I struggled with knowing the idea that I wanted to use and how to utilize those pieces in the classroom after our routines had been set from the beginning of the year. As a professional, I have become more reflective when it comes to using best practices with students, collecting data to monitor student growth, and collaborating with colleagues. After action research ended, I realized collaboration with colleagues was the piece that helped me to talk through how to implement these resources in the classroom, support my students, and find solutions for behaviors in the classroom. I created a support group with colleagues in and out of my building that I will be able to utilize with future professional needs.
Impact on Future Teaching
In the future, I believe social-emotional learning can be incorporated in writing, social studies, and science. Writing is a safe space for students to express their feelings in a healthily way and highlight specific areas of social-emotional skills. As for social studies and science, these are areas where students have more opportunity to showcase social-emotional skills due to the higher level of peer to peer interactions during activities. These will be the times where I will be able to get a sense of what the strengths are with students and what skills they still need. I do hope to start implementing social-emotional learning at the beginning of the year because I want these skills to become a norm in the classroom. Implementing social-emotional learning at the beginning of the year will guide students with self-regulation skills they need to problem solve. In the future, I plan to have a time for students to come up and discuss issues or emotions they are having. I realized during this action research that students did not always feel comfortable talking to me because students were always around me. By having a scheduled time and a way for students to sign up, then I can have more one-on-one interactions and have students feel confident in sharing with me.
What I Learned and Remaining Questions
I learned how important the relationships I built with my students and how it would help me in being successful in teaching social-emotional skills. Building those relationships helped students connect to content when exemplified through examples that I had personally gone through. When it comes to my action research, without taking time to have those relationships at the beginning of the year, these lessons would not have been as powerful or meaningful for my students. When it comes to lesson planning, I learned how to be creative in providing instruction. Students need the visual and shock value when it comes to learning these skills. For example, when we talked about digital citizenship I used a video I created for class that included a few people that I knew close to their age and how social media can have the same effect on you as your words in person. I still wonder how the class would be if this was implemented right at the beginning of the year? Would a building wide adoption of Sanford Harmony in the classroom help with limiting behaviors? Would in classroom morning meetings be more beneficial than scheduling in time between curriculum after whole school morning meeting? After getting a feel for student needs, would collaborating with the counselor to promote these skills during both areas enhance student social-emotional skills? Would social-emotional skills be able to be taught all year long using Sanford Harmony?