Arrowhead and Setauket Elementary School students are learning how to develop strong social and emotional character skills through hands-on lessons facilitated with the support of the school’s building psychologists.
Through a needs assessment from the staff, student brainstorming and data from the behaviors related sections on the report card, the schools have established and facilitated activities to promote the growth of well-rounded students not only academically, but socially and emotionally.
Lessons relate to student wellness topics such as emotion recognition, managing stress in school, attention control and listening with one’s whole body. Teachers participate in discussions/activities along with the psychologists to help relate the information to their current class content and ensure carryover after push-in lessons end.
One of the recent projects involved students defining what it looks like to be focused in class and then categorizing pictures to note if the images showed focused or nonfocused students.