SEL Learning Goal 5: Responsible and Ethical Decision-making
Subgoal 5B: Engage in a reflective process to evaluate outcomes
Definitions: Evaluate and Reflect
Grade Bands Pre K to 6
How to use this module…
Please print out a copy of this module to add to the others you have already done so that you can write on the pages when there is a reflection or activity to do.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) & SEL
ALL of the SEL skills, strategies, ideas, activities to do with students can be adjusted, adapted, and accommodated so that ALL students can ACCESS and PARTICIPATE in Social- Emotional Learning Goals and Competencies.
Through:
Multiple Means of Engagement
Multiple Means of Representation
Multiple Means of Action and Expression
Let’s Review the New SEL Definition
CASEL’s (The Collaborative for Social Emotional Learning) New Definition describes SEL as: “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.”
“We’ve updated our definition and framework to pay close attention to how SEL affirms the identities, strengths and experiences of all children, including those who have been marginalized in our education systems.”
A Closer Look at Responsible and Ethical Decision-Making
Responsible and Ethical Decision-Making Includes...
SEL Learning Goal 5: Responsible and Ethical Decision-Making
MVSD Benchmark Skills and Strategies: Pre-K-K
Subgoal 5B: Engage in a reflective process to evaluate decision outcomes
Definition: Evaluate and reflect (strategies in red from MVSD SEL Curriculum)
Benchmark Skills | Strategies |
When prompted and supported by a trusted adult:
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Honesty is the Best Policy
Video stories to share with children when teaching them about honesty and consequences.
Discuss after… what does Ricky lie about? What does he want to do?
What is the consequence of Ricky’s lying?
Don’t Cheat to Win
Vocabulary and concepts to focus on: cheating, honesty
Ruthie and the Teeny Tiny Lie
Vocabulary and concepts to focus on: lying, telling the truth
How does your tummy feel when you tell a lie? Does it do flip flops? How does your thinking brain feel? So you feel worried? Do you think about the lie all the time and you can’t eat or sleep?
The Honesty Song- Be Honest
Teach students The Honesty Song!
The Power of Self- Reflection
The Empowered Educator Online offers 16 Ways Educators Can Help Young Children Self-Reflect and Why it’s Important
Scroll down the article to the awesome list of 16 Ideas from the author on how to teach children about self-evaluating.
After viewing the list, find one idea you will try with your students.
Scholastic has an adaptable set of ideas to talk about with students when setting up classroom rules and consequences. If students are a part of creating the rules, they will be more likely to follow them. Scholastic suggests using this list to get started:
Read on for details...here then read on about setting consequences…. here
Why is it important to create the classroom expectations together?
The Art of Education offers 3 benefits:
Read on to see HOW you can create these shared classroom expectations (adapt to the younger age group as needed).
SEL Learning Goal 5: Responsible and Ethical Decision-Making
MVSD Benchmark Skills and Strategies: Grade 1 & 2
Subgoal 5B: Engage in a reflective process to evaluate decision outcomes
Definition: Evaluate and reflect (strategies in red from MVSD SEL Curriculum)
Benchmark Skills | Strategies |
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Simon the Self-Control Seal
What’s the best choice? Have students listen to the story and learn the song Simon Sings: “Stop, Think, and Breathe, and Make the Right Choice”
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STOP, THINK, and BREATHE…
and make the right choice!
Make copies and have each student keep this on their desks where they can remember and practice singing it when making choices- enlarge to hang a big sign in the classroom!
STOP, THINK, and ACT!
Here is another picture example to use to teach children what to do before they act or behave in certain situations.
Strategies to Teach Young Children How to Solve Real Problems Kids Their Age May Have
These 8 Strategies come from a site called: The Atlas Mission - from the HOME page, The Atlas Mission is: an educational game for ages 3-7 that improves reading and writing skills, STEM and 21st Skills, and brings awareness to other cultures
To read more on each strategy AND to download a FREE copy of the game go HERE
STRATEGY 1: Talk it Out STRATEGY 5: Work in a Group
STRATEGY 2: ACT it OUT/ Role Play STRATEGY 6: Practice Trial and Error
STRATEGY 3: Draw it STRATEGY 7: Make a Model
STRATEGY 4: Use Manipulatives STRATEGY 8: GIve Your Little One
Jobs/ errands to do
Pro and Con Real Life Problem Solving Graphic Organizer
Model and practice using the PRO and CON organizer as a way to brainstorm real life problems that young children may have:
To get this FREE organizer from All Kids Network, register here. (adapt as needed)
Make a poster size PRO /CON sheet so children can see it and interact with it as you write down their ideas.
TPT offers a FREE PRO and CON Graphic Organizer , click here (adapt as needed)
SEL Learning Goal 5: Responsible and Ethical Decision-Making
MVSD Benchmark Skills and Strategies: Grade 3 & 4
Subgoal 5B: Engage in a reflective process to evaluate decision outcomes
Definition: Evaluate and reflect (strategies in red from MVSD SEL Curriculum)
Benchmark Skills | Strategies |
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Teaching Young Children How to Self- Monitor Behavior- AKA- Self- Regulation
Learning how self- regulate and self- monitor one’s behavior is a part of the Executive Functions Family of Skills (EF). While EF skills come more naturally to some of us and we have learned by seeing others model self- regulating behaviors, EF skills are not inherent and need to be taught. How can we teach children to regulate their behaviors and reflect on whether their actions were helpful or harmful?
The OT Toolbox offers some helpful tips and strategies.
Author Colleen Beck shares that when children can self- monitor their actions and thoughts, many areas are developed: attention, behavior, problem-solving abilities, hindsight, foresight, persistence, shift
To read the entire article, go here.
Student Self- Evaluations
Teachers Pay Teachers offers free behavior self assessment checklists. You can modify the checklist to meet the needs of your students.
Here’s another FREE self- evaluation checklist that covers many areas.
Exit Tickets for Self-Reflection
The author of Primarily Speaking.com offers some helpful suggestions for using exit tickets for self-reflection. She shares the benefits:
Get your students in the habit of self-reflecting with this easy tool!
Click here for FREE Exit Tickets!
Whole Group Reflection
The Gifted Guru offers some whole group reflection questions to use with students. These can be adapted for any age group. Here is a small sampling:
Do you use whole group reflection activities with your students? If yes, what questions do you ask?f not, do you see some questions on the list that you might use?
Source: https://www.giftedguru.com/group-work-reflection-questions/
Rings of Responsibility
Show your students this brief but powerful video from Common Sense Education on: Rings of Responsibility
After viewing it, have class discussion about the concept of a “ripple effect” and how our actions can lead to other actions and consequences that are not always positive.
Taking Responsibility for Our Choices
Social Emotional Workshop offers some suggestions as to how making responsibility and choice is important for the classroom:
The author offers some strategies to implement in the classroom to support students in gaining responsibility and choice, but with some “guardrails”: Take a look here:
Source: https://www.socialemotionalworkshop.com/2018/03/responsibility-and-choice-in-the-classroom/
Resources for Helping Students with Responsibility
Check out this FREE resource” from Teachers Pay Teachers:
“I take responsibility for my own actions.” - you could use it as an intro to Responsibility and Making Choices
Conflict Resolution Sheet - a self-reflection sheet that can help students identify what happened, how it made them feel, and owning their part of what happened
Character Education: Responsibility - this resource includes:
SEL Learning Goal 5: Responsible and Ethical Decision-Making
MVSD Benchmark Skills and Strategies: Grade 5 & 6
Subgoal 5B: Engage in a reflective process to evaluate decision outcomes
Definition: Evaluate and reflect (strategies in red from MVSD SEL Curriculum)
Benchmark Skills | Strategies |
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Resources for Teachers:
Teaching Students How to Identify Trusted Adults
RMC Health Partners is an organization that provides “professional learning and capacity-building that helps prepare young people to be knowledgeable, capable, and effective.” Check out this resource for Identifying trusted adults- HEALTH SKILL: Access Valid & Reliable Resources- Although this is targeted for younger children, the info it contains within it can be easily modified to meet the needs of learners at any grade level.
Resource to Use With Students: How to Identify Trusted Adults
Adams12 Five Star Schools offers a teaching tool/resource for parents and educators on: Becoming a Trusted Adult for Youth.
This resource can support educators in “How to use trusted adult strategies to have conversations with youth about difficult subjects and navigate conversations as a family, from cleaning your room to resisting peer pressure.”- Adams12.org
Check out this amazing resource - it includes strategies such as reflective listening with a “TRY IT” slide that follows each strategy in the slide show.
Source of info for this slide: https://www.adams12.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/April%20BHC%20Trusted%20Adult%20Slides%20%281%29.pdf
Teaching Students to Become Better Decision-Makers
VeryWell Mind offers: 9 Little Habits That Make You a Better Decision Maker: Although the focus in the article is on adults, for educational purposes, these Habits have been modified to look through the student lens at this age level. They can be used by teachers when working with their students on how to self- evaluate their decision-making skills in order to become more effective decision-makers:
HABIT 1: Take a look to see if you act in a way that is overconfident: especially when it comes to your time management- students may think they’ve got this and may procrastinate and then when assignment or project is due, they realize they didn’t give themselves enough time to do it well.
HABIT 2: Identify the risks you take: have students think about their daily habits and identify which ones are or could become unhealthy over time, and create a plan for healthier habits
Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/habits-for-better-decision-making-4153045
Healthy Habits for Decision-making continued...
Habit 3: Frame Your Problems in a Different Way: teach students how to frame the issue and by changing the wording, it can help make a difference on hat decision they make (ex: you need surgery and the dr says “90% of people survive” vs looking through a negative lens “ 10% of the people don’t make it”)
Habit 4: Stop Thinking About the Problem: help students understand that over-thinking choices can be a problem- can increase stress levels and then it becomes hard to make any decision
Habit 5: Set aside time to Reflect on Mistakes: share with students that it is a good idea to reflect on the choices they made throughout the day- teach them to use the: “detect”, “reflect”, and “correct” strategy (next slide) * from MVSD’s SEL Guide
Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/habits-for-better-decision-making-4153045
Detect, Reflect, and Correct: An Exercise and Guide for Future Decision-making
DETECT (Identify the problem/ decision you made) | REFLECT (look closely the decision) | CORRECT (think about what you might do differently next time) |
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Detect, Reflect, and Correct Pie Chart: An Exercise and Guide for Future Decision-making
Detect Reflect
Correct
Healthy Habits for Decision-making continued...
Habit 6: Acknowledge Your Shortcuts: teach students that our brains create mental shortcuts to help us make quicker decisions- but sometimes, that can be more hurtful than helpful sometimes we make quick decisions based on info that comes to mind; info we see frequently can affect our decisions
Habit 7: Consider the Opposite: explain to students that once we decide something is true, we usually stick with that belief so to work on changing this is to argue the opposite- do exercises with students to practice this strategy: arguing the opposite (ex: if you think giving a speech in front of the class is uncomfortable and not possible, think about what can help make it possible and comfortable so you can do it)
Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/habits-for-better-decision-making-4153045
Healthy Habits for Decision-making continued...
Habit 8: Label Your Emotions: for more details on labeling emotions go here - share with students that their feelings impact the decisions they make- labeling feelings can lead to better decisions-teach students to make it a daily habit to label how they are feeling!
Habit 9: Talk to Yourself Like a Trusted Friend: teach students that when they are dealing with a decision they need to make and are struggling, they can ask themselves: “What would I say to a friend who has this problem?”
Source: https://www.verywellmind.com/habits-for-better-decision-making-4153045
Decision-Making Resources
Check out this resource- 5 Best Decision-Making Activities for Middle School
Decision-making worksheet and scenarios
Decision-making activities for the whole class - focuses on the importance of making informed decisions
Decision Making Wheel Activity- change the scenarios and/or come up with your own for the class to work through- break students into smaller groups
Wheel source from: https://www.dese.gov.au/
You Did It!!!
You have completed SEL Learning Goal 5: Responsible and Ethical Decision-Making Subgoals A & B for Grade Bands Pre K-6!
For a final reflection, please reflect upon a new learning, strategy, idea, video, etc from this module- something that you hadn’t had any prior knowledge about and/or one takeaway that you will try and/or incorporate your teaching. Thank you for your participation!
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THANK YOU!
My hope is somewhere along in this process of all the new learning and discovery of ideas, strategies, tools, and resources for SEL Teaching Practices that you gained in these modules, you now feel excited, confident, and ready to infuse and embed these into your daily teaching, EVERYTHING you do makes a difference and as Maya Angelou once said: