Promoting%20Social%20Emotional%20Competence

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Promoting Social Emotional Competence Promoting
Childrens Success Building Relationships and
Creating Supportive Environments Module 1
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Agenda

• Introduction
• Examining attitudes
• Relationship between challenging behavior and
  social emotional development
• Creating environments
• Building relationships
• Designing physical environment
• Schedules, routines transitions
• Activities that promote engagement
• Giving directions
• Following rules directions
• Ignoring/redirecting
• Ongoing monitoring and positive attention
• Using positive feedback encouragement
• Pulling it all together

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Learner Objectives

1. Participants will be able to describe the
   relationship between childrens social emotional
   development and challenging behaviors
2. Participants will be able to describe the
   importance of building relationships with
   children, families, and colleagues
3. Participants will be able to describe the
   relationship between a number of environmental
   variables and childrens challenging behaviors
4. Participants will be able to identify strategies
   to build positive relationships
5. Participants will use positive feedback and
   encouragement appropriately
6. Participants will evaluate their work

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Examining Our Attitudes about Challenging Behavior

• What behaviors make you crazy or
• push your buttons?
• How do these behaviors make you
• feel?

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Managing Personal Stress Thought Control
Upsetting Thoughts That child is a monster.
This is getting ridiculous. Hell never
change. Im sick of putting out fires!
Calming Thoughts This child is testing to see
where the limits are. My job is to stay calm
and help him learn better ways to behave. I
can handle this. I am in control. They have
just learned some powerful ways to get control.
I will teach them more appropriate ways to
behave.


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Managing Personal Stress Thought Control
Upsetting Thought I wonder if Wal-Mart is
hiring? He ruins everything! This is going
to be the worst year of my career.
Calming Thoughts I feel undervalued right now
I need to seek support from my peers and
supervisor. Having him in my class is going
to be a wonderful Professional Development
experience.


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Key Social Emotional Skills Children Need as They
Enter School

• Key Skills
• Confidence
• Capacity to develop good relationships with peers
  
• Concentration and persistence on challenging
  tasks
• Ability to effectively communicate emotions
• Ability to listen to instructions and be
  attentive
• When children dont have these skills, they often
  exhibit challenging behaviors
• We must focus on teaching the skills!!

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Some Basic Assumptions

• Challenging behavior is most often related to
  some skill deficit (e.g., language, social)
• Behavior that persists over time is working for
  the child
• When we have positive relationships with
  children, supportive classroom environments, and
  focus on teaching social and communication
  skills, we reduce the likelihood of challenging
  behavior

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Classroom Preventive Practices - Promoting
Childrens Success

• Create a context that makes EVERY child feel good
  about coming to school
• Design an environment that promotes child
  engagement
• Focus on teaching children what To Do!
• Teach expectations and routines
• Teach skills that children can use in place of
  challenging behaviors

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Intensive Individualized Interventions
Social Emotional Teaching Strategies

Creating Supportive Environments
Positive Relationships with Children, Families,
and Colleagues
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Building Relationshipswith Children

• Why is it important?
• - Creating a safe environment for children
• - Ensuring that all children, even those with
  the most challenging behaviors, have access to
  ongoing positive relationships
• How do we build relationships with children?

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Strategies for Building Relationships

• Select a partner
• Brainstorm a list of things you could do to
• build or strengthen relationships with
  children, families, or other colleagues
• From that list, identify 2-3 things you are going
  to work on in order to build stronger
• relationships with the children, families, or
  colleagues

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Intensive Individualized Interventions
Social Emotional Teaching Strategies

Creating Supportive Environments
Positive Relationships with Children, Families,
and Colleagues
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Classroom Arrangement and Design Traffic Patterns

• Carefully plan traffic patterns
• Minimize large open spaces
• Minimize obstacles and other
• hazards
• Consider the needs of children with
• physical and sensory disabilities

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Classroom Arrangement and Design Learning Centers

• Physical Design
• Clear boundaries
• Visibility
• Visual prompts when centers are not an option
• Adequate number of centers
• Size and location of centers
• Number of children in centers
• Organization of materials
• Preparation of centers

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Classroom Arrangement and Design Learning Centers

• Create Meaningful and Engaging Learning Centers
• Relevant to childrens needs,
• interests, and lives
• Highly engaging and interesting
• Variety of materials in each center
• Changed and rotated on a regular
• basis

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Classroom Arrangement and Design Activity

• With a partner, sketch a classroom. Review item
  3 on the Inventory and consider what changes need
  to be made in the classroom based on what you
  heard or what is in the Inventory
• Revise your sketch of the
• environment and then share major changes with
  other participants at
• the table

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Schedules and Routines

• Develop a schedule that promotes child
• engagement and success
• Minimize the number of transitions
• Balance active and quiet activities, small
• group and large group activities, teacher-
• directed and child-directed activities
• Teach children the schedule
• Establish a routine and follow it consistently
• When changes are necessary, prepare children
  ahead of time

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Transitions

• Plan for transitions
• Minimize the length of time children spend
  waiting with nothing to do
• Prepare children for transitions by
• providing a warning
• Structure the transitions so that children
• have something to do while they wait
• Teach children the expectations related to
  transitions
• Individualize supports and cues

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Schedule Activity

• Divide into groups of people who currently
• work together
• Write down a schedule from one of the
• participants classroom
• Consider the things we have just talked
• about. What changes could you make in the
• schedule that might increase engagement
• and prevent challenging behaviors?
• Share your major changes with others at
• your table and brainstorm possible solutions

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Large Group Activities

• Planning the activity
• Consider the length
• Be clear about the purpose and goals of the
• activities
• Use circle time to teach new things
• Implementing the activity
• Provide opportunities to be actively involved
• Assign jobs to children
• Vary your speech and intonation patterns
• Have children lead activities
• Pay attention to childrens behavior

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Circle Activity

• Clip 1.2
• Are the children engaged?
• What tells you that?
• Describe the teachers behavior in this clip.
• Clip 1.3
• Are the children engaged?
• What tells you that?
• What is the teacher doing that engages the
  children?
• Both Clips
• What strategies can you suggest that would help
  the teacher engage the children even more?

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Small Group Activities

• Importance of small group activities
• Skill building
• Individualized attention
• Planning and implementing
• Be clear about the goal
• Use peers as models
• Ensure participation by all children
• Make them fun
• Provide feedback throughout

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Adaptations and Modifications(Sandall
Schwartz, 2002)

• Environmental support
• Materials adaptation
• Simplify the activity
• Use child preferences
• Special equipment
• Adult support
• Peer support

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Giving Directions

• Make sure you have the childrens attention
  before you give the direction
• Minimize the number of directions given to
  children
• Individualize the way directions are given
• Give clear directions

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Giving Directions

• Give directions that are positive
• Give children the opportunity to respond to a
  direction
• When appropriate, give the child choices and
  options for following directions
• Follow through with positive acknowledgment of
  childrens behavior

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General Guidelines about Rules and Directions

• Have a few simple classroom rules
• Involve the children in developing the rules
• Post the rules visually
• Teach the rules systematically
• Reinforce the rules at high rates initially and
  at lower rates throughout the year

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Involving Children in Developing the Rules

• Have children help generate the rules
• Name the rule and have a child
• demonstrate the rule
• Name the rule and have the children
• identify the visuals that might go on a
• poster
• Have children help decorate a rules
• poster

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Rules

• Should Address
• Noise level
• Movement inside
• Interactions with property
• Interactions with adults
• Interactions with peers

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Rules Activity

• Develop a list of 3-5 rules you use or would use
  in a classroom
• Discuss these rules with others at the table
• Brainstorm fun and creative ways for teaching the
  rules

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Fun Ways to Reinforce the Rules

• Rules Bingo!
• Make a big book about school rules
• Homework what are your rules at home?
• Play rule charades

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Ignoring Misbehavior

• Is one of the most effective techniques that can
  be used with students
• Maintains positive teacher-student relationships
  based on respect rather than fear
• Requires that adults give attention for positive
  behaviors as opposed to negative ones
• Can be a powerful tool for changing behavior
  since access to attention is such a positive
  thing for children

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Ignoring Misbehavior

• Will only be effective with students who desire
  teacher attention
• Is probably the hardest teaching strategy for
  teachers to carry out
• Is unnatural - our natural tendency is to attend
  to students who are being disruptive

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To Use Ignoring

• Identify the specific behaviors you want to focus
  on
• Plan carefully to provide attention and positive
  feedback to the prosocial behaviors
• Neutralize your reaction to what the student is
  doing
• Return your attention by acknowledging
  appropriate behavior as soon as student begins to
  behave appropriately
• Teach other students to ignore inappropriate
  behaviors

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When You Ignore

• Most children will initially react to ignoring
  with an increase in the challenging behavior to
  see if they can recruit the adults attention
• Be prepared to wait out the testing period
• Remember that consistency is the key to using
  ignoring!

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Redirecting
When children are withdrawn or off task, it is
important that teachers do not ignore them. That
can send the message that the teacher has low
expectations for them or does not care
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Redirection

• Can be nonverbal, verbal, or physical in nature
• Should not be confrontational
• Should focus on the behavior you saw and provide
  specific feedback

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Ongoing Monitoring and Positive Attention

• Give children attention when they
• are engaging in appropriate
• behaviors
• Monitor our behavior to ensure that
  we are spending more time using positive
  descriptive language and less time giving
  directions or correcting inappropriate behavior

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Positive Attention Activity

• Count the number of positive comments the teacher
  makes (and positive nonverbals)
• Have a large group discussion about what types of
  comments and nonverbal behaviors the teacher
  exhibited
• Generate some ideas to help adults remain focused
  on the positive throughout the day
• Encourage participants to include some of these
  ideas on their Action Planning Form

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Using Positive Feedback and Encouragement 4
Principles

• Contingent on appropriate behavior
• Descriptive
• Conveyed with enthusiasm
• Contingent on effort

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Using Positive Feedbackand Encouragement

• Remember to use nonverbal forms of positive
  feedback and encouragement
• Individualize use of positive feedback and
  encouragement based on childrens needs and
  preferences
• Encourage other adults and peers to use positive
  feedback and encouragement

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Increasing PositiveBehaviors Activity

• What are 3-5 behaviors you would like to see
  increase in your setting?
• Review item 8 on the Inventory
• What changes might you make in your use of
  positive feedback and encouragement in order to
  increase the behaviors you just identified.
• Add this to your Action Plan

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Sample Certificate

• SUPER FRIEND AWARD!!!
• This certificate is to certify that Marleco
  is a SUPER FRIEND!!
• Today, Marleco used his words to ask Malen nicely
  for a turn on the swing. When he was done
  swinging, he asked Malen if she wanted another
  turn and then helped to push her. At circle
  time, he gave his friend Cesar a compliment!
  YAY Marleco!! What a Super Friend you are!!
• Give yourself a pat on the back!!
• Signed by Miss Gail Mr. Jim
• Date January 7, 2003

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Major Messages

• The first and most important thing that we can do
  is to build positive relationships with every
  child and family
• Focus on prevention and teaching appropriate
  skills
• Promoting social emotional development is not
  easy. There are no quick fixes to challenging
  behavior
• It requires a comprehensive approach that
  includes building relationships, evaluating our
  own classrooms and behaviors, and TEACHING

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