Ellen Spendel November 20th, 2011 Building Emotional Literacy through Discussions and Connection During my undergrad I had

the option to pick a new literacy to study, I was naturally drawn to emotional literacy. Through further studying the topic, I was felt enlightened: This new literacy taught students to understand their emotions, react appropriately and constructively to emotions, respond well to conflicts and build selfesteem and a positive attitude towards life and school. Reading the articles on how emotional literacy can help students concentrate and stay focused, build classroom community and help develop social skills, I knew it was a subject that could not be neglected in my first grade classroom. I was intrigued by the research presented to me via videos on www.edutopia.com on how teaching emotional literacy improved students ability to concentrate and perform well in school. It really seemed to all make sense, if there were less conflicts in the classroom because of good communication skills then obviously students are more focus and there are less management issues. If students gain positive outlook and good self-esteem then they can focus on school and will put the most effort in that they can. Coming into the classroom, with the mandated 90 minutes devoted to reading curriculum, hour mandated for math and an hour mandated for writing-with little room for adjustment in curriculum, and barely enough time for social studies and science, it did not seem possible to fit it all in! I wanted to come up with ideas on how to incorporate emotional literacy, but overwhelmed with assessments and planning, it was not something that was becoming a priority. To my delight, I found myself teaching emotional literacy through my realistic fiction unit.

One of my objectives for my unit was for students to make personal connections to the realistic fiction books I was reading to them. The first book I read, The Invisible String my students scraped the surface when they made their personal connections. Students all made the same connection that I had modeled, of waking up in the middle of the night and missing their mom. Students were able to identify their emotion as sad when I asked them how they felt, but they did not dig much deeper. I was concerned that students would only be able to mimic their peers and make the same obvious connection. The second book I read, The Name Jar, I became more hopeful. In addition to working on making connections with the stories, I was also having students identify story elements (character, setting, problem, resolution and theme). Students were having difficulty identifying the theme, which was to be expected. I prompted with many questions, How the problem was solvedwhat does that teach us? After wait time after wait time, and prompt after prompt, I often simply told them the theme for the books I read. I then asked students to make connections to this theme, one was Being different is difficult, but it is what makes us special and is a good thing (this was a recurring them in a couple of the books). After identifying the theme for the students, I asked them if they had an experience like the character Unhei, where they felt different than anyone else. Many students made connections related to other parts of the book (most common, and repeated several times: I was nervous for the first day of school), until one student said When I started kindergarten I was nervous because I had glasses and I thought no one else would have glasses, so I was nervous, but than Tisha* did too, and I was so excited and less nervous!. I was so happy when this student made this connection! He was able to make a connection about being different, that was completely different way of being different than the character Unhei (who felt different because of her Korean

Name that was difficult for all other kids to pronounce). In my prompts I had wanted to ask students if something in their appearance, such as glasses, made them feel different, but I did not want to single kids out (since one student often did not bring her glasses despite needing them because she disliked wearing them). Through this students connection, many other students were able to make similar connections, I was delighted! This showed me that when a student provides their explanation, this can prompt other students to make connections. So, why did I think it was so great that students were not scared to share their insecurities and what made them feel different? Because it meant that they felt comfortable in the classroom environment that my MT and I had created. Having glasses is notorious for being poked fun at and one student choose to make it obvious to the class that he had glasses and that this made him feel different from everyone else! The theme of the text being that what different makes us special made students connect emotionally and feel comfortable about being different around each other. I was even able to prompt students into thinking about how if we were all the same that this would not be a good thing, it would be boring. I said that we could learn from each other through our differences. This got students thinking even more! One student brought up how she could speak Polish, and taught us Polish words. I decided to then show students how my background of living in Mexico made me different, and I shared with them the Spanish language and culture (teach days of the week in Spanish, certain phrases, ect.). A student being able to express their differences depicted a sense of comfort in the class and has the potential to connect students to further build classroom community In addition to discussing differences, I was able to promote emotional literacy by focusing on emotions that characters felt and having students connect to them.

Students were able to think about why a characters face got red and why their face may have gotten red. Students were able to think about when they took a deep breath and why, and think about what that means for the characters. Prompting students to focus on emotions to make connections increased the amount of participation and understanding of how to make connections to a story. I was also helping students identify different types of emotions and the physical reactions we feel because of those emotions. This will help students not only understand themselves and their own reactions but also the emotions and reactions of their peers. This was an important aspect of emotional literacy, and I was teaching it, just as I promised myself in my undergrad! I stated earlier that my class may have been able to make connections because of a sense of comfort in the classroom, a sense of community. But there could be another reason to their willingness to share their differences. Students in my class have very similar backgrounds. Many students live in the same neighborhood, and play with each other after school. Many students have siblings that are friends and they get dragged to football games where they play together. Students had gone to kindergarten and preschool together and have built friendships there. Students often have play dates and parents that are friends. Their peers are very much a part of their community, and they feel comfortable around them. Students have similar socio economic backgrounds. The majority of the class is Caucasian, there are significant amount of African American students, a Korean and a Guatemalan student. Students are comfortable with this diversity. They do not see each other as different, or that there are differences between them. The students in my class do not segregate or only play with classmates of their race, but instead they all are friends and all play together. Differences did not seem to be an issue from the

start. I feel that the students sense of comfort with each other comes from how familiar they are with each other, which prompts them to speak openly with each other about their differences. When I planed my unit, the focus was realistic fiction, retelling and comprehension, but it turned it to so much more than that. It may have been my passion for emotional literacy and building classroom community, that made me do this subconsciously, but at the time it felt like the conversations and topics were happening naturally. It was the parts of the stories and themes that I focused on that prompted this conversation. I wanted the students to not only know the theme, but see how it applies to themselves, the class and life-all which included emotions. I wanted students to make deep connections, and I felt in order to this they had to have feeling and emotional connections with the story. What I learned is that for me, making meaningful connections to text requires emotional connection and a meaningful theme and leads to a building of classroom community. The more students make connections, the more they will bond, and the more they will be willing to keep making those amazing connections! The students were not the only ones that learned about each other, but I learned about them, and bonded with them, and they learned about me, and hopefully bonded with me. Finally, if you are like me and see the importance of students building community, understanding their emotions and feeling proud to be who they are, uniquely different, then you should and can incorporate emotional literacy into your daily teaching! I plan to continue teaching emotional literacy in formally planned lessons, morning meetings and just with daily interactions and conflicts with my students; I am confident I can be successful in this since it is significant to student development. Resources if Interested:

http://eqi.org/elit.htm#Definition of Emotional Literacy http://prezi.com/guigygeriy41/emotional-literacy/ http://www.familylinks.org.uk/nuturing/quiz.htm http://www.childcareaware.org/en/subscriptions/areyouaware/article.php?id=19 htttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122526518 Me: spendele@msu.edu Realistic Fiction Books Used: The Name Jar by Yangsooki Choi Invisible String by Patrice Karst Stars in my Geddohs Sky by Claire Matze The Rainbow Tulip by Pat Mora and Elizabeth Sayles