SEAL Newsletter Issue 16

Practical tools

The personalised feelings fan
This idea from Mia Casey is a great way of supporting children who need help with managing strong feelings. Take photos of the child showing...

Making time for SEAL
This blog post from Vicki Zakrzewski has some good tips for ways that social-emotional learning can be integrated into traditional lessons. ‘Schools...

Quick tips

The personalised feelings fan
This idea from Mia Casey is a great way of supporting children who need help with managing strong feelings. Take photos of the child showing...

Making time for SEAL
This blog post from Vicki Zakrzewski has some good tips for ways that social-emotional learning can be integrated into traditional lessons. ‘Schools...

New research

Do those animal stories really help children be kinder?
Six year olds with good social and emotional skills four times more likely to graduate from college
Long-lasting impact of social and emotional learning
Social and emotional skills programme pays for itself fourteen times over
Quarter of young Brits confess to ‘bullying or insulting’ someone online
Social and emotional skills crucial to digital citizenship
Just 1 in 6 schools has character education plan despite £10m funding
Mental health provision in English schools
Bullying in childhood: cause or consequence of mental health problems?
Anti-bullying programme a good investment

Top resource

The Expandaball
Expandaball This expanding ball is great for teaching mindful breathing. Pass the ball round and tell the children to breathe in while slowly...

SEAL Newsletter Issue 16

PISA report finds more needs to be done to foster social skills across the school curriculum

“In a world that places a growing premium on social skills, a lot more needs to be done to foster those skills far more systematically across the school curriculum,” Andreas Schleicher, director for education and skills at the OECD, writes in the foreword to his report on the latest international PISA study of fifteen-year-olds.

All schools in England to have a Designated Senior Lead for Mental Health
A new consultation from the DfE proposes that government will'incentivise and support all schools to identify and train a Designated Senior Lead for...

Council of 28 leading scientists call for schools to focus on social and emotional learning
2017 saw two comprehensive reports making the case for social and emotional learning (SEL) in schools. The researchers behind one of the most widely...

Government call for evidence on changes to the teaching of Relationships and Sex Education and PSHE
A  new call for evidence, ending on 12 February, asks for views on how the content of Relationships education (primary) , Relationships and Sex education (secondary), and PSHE , plus the current guidance on sex education, should be updated in England.The proposed content for Relationships and SRE is included in the consultation document. It includes

Sharing practice

Magna Carta School
Magna Carta secondary school in Surrey has a comprehensive approach to mental health and wellbeing. Clare Erasmus was appointed director of mental health and wellbeing in 2015. Her first step was to consult young people. With the help of a professional researcher, she conducted focus groups with every year group. Based on the results, she then developed a questionnaire for the whole student body.

Pop-up Family SEAL at Exminster Primary School
Each year, staff at Exminster Primary run a series of five weekly Family SEAL sessions for new Reception class parents. Each one takes the format of an adult session followed by an adult and child session where adults have the opportunity to explore particularly activities with their child in school. Any family member or friend can attend; any children whose adults are unable to attend complete the same activities with their school adults and take the activities home for adults to do at home as well if they can.

Children leading SEAL at Instow Primary
Instow Community Primary and Pre-school in North Devon serves a mixed community, with rural and coastal deprivation. It has developed its own novel approach to SEAL, which it uses in conjunction with the Rights Respecting School approach (https://www.unicef.org.uk/rights-respecting-schools/) and THRIVE approaches (https://www.thriveapproach.com/the-thrive-approach/).

Marcus Garvey Elementary School
This one is a video case study. If you’d like to see what a genuinely whole-school approach to social and emotional learning looks like, watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITaNXKSTyZM and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6vS0UBGSW4

Resource roundup

Going for Goals primary round-up
We’ve uploaded new primary resources for work on Going for Goals, with the highlight some lessons based on the award-winning SOAR, a lovely short...
Choose kind
'Be the nice kid' is a heartwarming film about the importance of kindness, made by children in an Aberdeenshire school. Children at Dunnottar School...
Healthy Minds
The London Grid for Learning has produced free classroom resources to help school communities build resilience and understand mental health better....
Mental health and behaviour in schools guidance
In November the DfE updated this guidance for school staff, which applies to all schools in England. It gives advice on:• how to create a whole...
New roadmap to statutory RSE
We await the English government’s response to its consultation on new guidance for teaching a statutory Relationships and Sex Education curriculum....