Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) - Others

Encourage students to reflect on how they worked and learned in social settings
What are they:

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is an integral part of education and human development. SEL is the process through which all young people and adults acquire and apply the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain supportive relationships, and make responsible and caring decisions.

Questions in this section focus on the following 2 areas from the CASEL framework, which provides a foundation for applying evidence-based SEL strategies in your learning community:

  • Social awareness
  • Relationship skills

Social reflections encourage students to think about how they work with other students. These can be asked in response to an interpersonal school activity such as a group project, or in isolation, and can also be used as a warm up activity at the start of class.

Prime opportunities to engage with students about their social learning are in any group settings (for example a class project), helping students develop an understanding of how they can learn better as they progress through school and into society as adults. 

Research highlights reflecting on SEL helps students improve crucial social traits like persistence, empathy and self confidence. It has also been linked to better academic performance, stronger rates of completion of work and a better mental state in their learning environment.

Benefits:
  • Understand the social confidence of students
  • Find problem areas within group dynamics that can be adjusted for future group settings and projects
  • Teaches students to self regulate their emotions
  • Positive social interactions with their peers
  • Less social distress in the school environment 
  • Improved social awareness
  • Improved relationship skills
Example questions:
What’s one thing you’ve learned about yourself working on your group assignment?
Text Response
How have you ‘problem solved’ in your group for the term project?
Text Response
What did you learn about working with others this term?
Text Response
Follow up activities:
  • Reflect on class responses to ensure there are no class-wide issues 
  • Share themes with the class and use them as a basis for discussion

A full list of questions you can use in your class can be found in Ziplet’s question library under “Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) - Others”.

Pro tip:

Ask your students to provide specific examples from their group experience in their responses.

Access a library of template questions

Ziplet contains over 250+ template questions you can use with your students including the ones used for this check-in.

To access the full library, log in, or create your free account here.

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