Welcome to the SEAL community!
Social and emotional learning helps children and young people to:
‘… learn how to communicate their feelings, set themselves goals and work towards them, interact successfully with others, resolve conflicts peaceably, control their anger and negotiate their way through the many complex relationships in their lives today and tomorrow’.
This kind of learning underpins positive behaviour and attitudes to learning, personal development and mental health and wellbeing. It is at the heart of PSHE, relationships and health education.
Research shows it also helps raise attainment. Social and emotional learning is attracting increasing attention in schools. On this website you will find age-related teaching resources and whole school frameworks to support your work.
Many of them come from the national ‘Social and emotional Learning’ (SEAL) initiative. By registering with us (which is free, quick and easy), you can immediately find and download all of the national SEAL curriculum materials and teacher guidance. There’s a progression in learning objectives that can be used in any school, and training materials if you want to introduce or refresh a whole-school SEAL approach. Click on National Resources then click the Getting Started with SEAL tab.
If you would like regularly updated teaching resources, you can also join our SEAL Community. Set up and supported by leading experts in the field, the SEAL Community is a not-for-profit organisation which aims to promote and develop SEAL through sharing news, practice, resources and expertise. Joining costs £30 for individuals, £75 for schools/settings and £100 for local authorities or other multi-school organisations. Click here to join
News update
In 2017, Theresa May launched a £200 million initiative to offer mental health awareness training to every secondary school over the next three years. But when the scheme ended in March 2020, only 2,710 of the 3,456 state secondary schools in England had completed the training. A total of 4,178 teachers took part, but the scheme fell 746 schools short.
Most teaching staff in England think pupil behaviour has got worse since the Covid-19 lockdown, a survey for the Tes showed.
More than two-thirds (69 per cent) of teachers, school leaders and teaching assistants reported that pupils' behaviour has dipped since the coronavirus lockdown closed schools to most pupils.
An NHS report finds that rates of probable mental disorders have increased since 2017. In 2020, one in six children aged 5 to 16 years were identified as having a probable mental disorder, increasing from one in nine in 2017. The increase was evident in both boys and girls. The increase was more pronounced among primary-aged children, especially boys aged 5 to 10 years.
A survey by Young Minds found that 61% of young people with pre-existing mental health needs felt their mental health initially declined since returning to school (during the first four weeks of the new term) because of pressure to catch up academically, difficult relationships and worries about safety.
Fewer than half of English state schools are offering counselling for pupils on site in the wake of the coronavirus lockdown, research from IPPR showed. Fewer schools offer services now than in 2010 and schools in more deprived areas were most likely to have lost out.
Sharing practice
Billesley Primary in Birmingham is part of the Education Endowment Foundation’s Research Schools network and has recently described its work on social and emotional learning in a network blog.
June O'Sullivan, chief executive of London Early Years Foundation, describes how settings developed their work on kindness in a lovely blog which first appeared on the LEYF website and has been adapted here.
At Ysgol Bae Baglan School in Wales, Year 2 students were challenged by their teacher to choose a word and make a video explaining what it means and using the word in a sentence. The words were all based around emotions.
At Crab Lane Primary School in Manchester, Year 2 read Anthony Browne’s Silly Billy picture book then created their own lolly-stick puppet Worry Dolls.
They worked in pairs to take on the role of Billy or a Worry Doll and developed a short role play that was performed in a small puppet theatre. Watch some films of the performances here: https://www.crablane.manchester.sch.uk/super-learning-worksheets/year-2c/autumn-term-2020-2
The children later took their puppets home to share their ideas with their families.
We are hearing that most children are excited to be back and just want to get on and move forward. So our top tips are about hope and positivity:
1. Focus in class or tutor group on the strengths children have shown during the lockdown. Ask what they have felt proud of, what they learned about themselves, what skills they developed, how they helped others, how they managed boredom, how they motivated themselves to do some schoolwork (however little)
Resource roundup
‘Social action’ (children and young people making a difference) is a great way to develop social and emotional skills.
The Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education (CARE) programme is a US-developed 3-4 day professional development program (delivered a day
Practical tools
Try this nice empathy mirror exercise from Empathy Lab in class...
Teacher Elena Aguard describes how on the first day of school she gives students a survey...
Tell your class this…
We all understand R numbers now, and have been trying to keep the COVID R number below 1. From this podcast https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p096kzt8 I learned that research has shown that the R number for kindness is between 4 and 5. Each person being kind passes that on to 4 to 5 others. Each of these in turn pass it to four or five more, through three ‘degrees of separation’. The end point is that, using 5 as the R number, 1 person’s kindness will make 125 people happier. Tell that to your class!
New research
Scientists at the University of Kent have found that in conversation, adolescents spend 12 per cent less time looking at the other person’s face compared with young adults...
In a world of (sometimes) selfish adults, it is nice to know that very young children can be generous to others in need...
Families Connect is a programme developed by Save the Children UK to help parents support their children’s learning in the home...
In this non-experimental study researchers analysed data on 740 children who took up one-to-one counselling...
The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues have published a report on a sample of Ofsted inspections in Birmingham and London schools.
They found that inspectors focused more on perseverance, resilience and grit than other social and emotional capabilities.
Find out more at https://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/media/news/article/6784/New-Insight-Series-Paper-Character-and-Ofsted-