Social Emotional Reading Strategies

Our classrooms are filled with little people, which means they are filled with big hopes and real fears. Let’s talk about how to help our students overcome their reading fears. Learning to read stirs up a great deal of fear and anxiety in many of our students, and it requires social-emotional skills to overcome them. 
Find out more about this at www.ginapepin.com 
#JoyfulReadingApproach

Transcript

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Welcome to the Let's Talk Teacher to Teacher Podcast. My name is Dr. Gina Puppet, and I am so very happy to meet you. I'm a Midwestern mom of three and a super enthusiastic reading professor, a busy reading specialist at a wonderful elementary school. I was the 2018-2019 Upper Michigan Teacher of the Year, and I really enjoy mentoring teachers of all levels. I have a great passion for early literacy, and I am the co-author along with the very extremely talented children's author, Eric Litwin. Together we wrote The Power of Joyful Reading to help your young readers towards success. Each week I offer you packs of make it takes and tips, easy tips along with real life shared stories, so that you can easily create joyful shared reading experiences in your classroom, daycare centers, and homes right away. I am here to help you make powerful changes. Let's do this together. So today's podcast focuses on social emotional reading strategies. So let's talk teacher to teacher. Our classrooms are filled with little people, which which means they are filled with big hopes and real fears. Sometimes those classrooms and even think about the playgrounds can be really scary. Let's talk about how to help our students overcome their reading fears. Because you know what folks, this is real. Learning to read stirs up a great deal of fear and anxiety in many of our students. It's going to require social emotional skills to actually overcome them. They do really they really do have some intense fears about learning to read. Perhaps they've had bad experiences, or they just have an overall fear of it themselves. They're just unsure. We cannot assume that our students have skills, these social emotional skills to succeed or be really successful. And honestly, I'm learning that this past two years, this is so very true. Our students are really lacking stamina and endurance and those in resiliency and a true motivational factor to just push through. We need to build in support systems and empower students to face any reading anxieties that may occur for them. And to do this, I'm gonna tell you how to weave in the joyful reading approach. Because we know the joyful reading approach has many important benefits. It infuses intentional and focused joy into our school day, something all of our students and teachers truly, truly need in these challenging times. So the first thing we need to do is, of course, create a safe and predictable teaching and learning environment. We have to help our children feel safe. We also need to provide opportunities to model and teach them how to practice regulating their emotions. They also need to understand that connection between what a behavior is and what emotion is present. We also need to make sure our environments include options for our students to develop a sense of agency. Some of our students coming from traumatic scenarios or families or events, we really need to be able to provide them some choices. Whether it's just choose between one or two things, it actually gives them a sense of empowerment. They can then kind of control their environments, developing that true sense of agency. Make sure that you also promote inclusion. Use multiple ways to present information to your students. And one of the things I like to even have my students do is re-have them repeat those instructions or those expectations or phrases after you deliver that information. Because then it actually engages them in multiple ways. At the forefront is Eric and I have talked about the importance of learning and how it really is a deeply human experience. So establishing trusting reading relationships is going to be really key for learning to take place. We need to build genuinely trusting reading relationships with our students from daycare all the way up to early elementary. After all, you are their primary reading relationship and you as their teacher. Of course, the school librarians and reading specialists and other volunteers are also just as important, and those relationships need to be built as well. So be on the lookout for other positive role models in your building, in your community, who can build a supportive reading relationship with your students. Then remember, as their primary teacher, you can praise and encourage your students to help them feel secure and safe. In our book, we share a section on positive praise in one of the teacher-to-teacher sections. Sometimes your students just need you to listen and emphasize with them. Learn how to be a really, really good listener. Our school uses the Leader in Me program. It is such a fabulous program. And one of those habits is Habit 5, and it's seek first to understand, then to be understood. We know most people listen with the intent to reply, not to understand. I wish that people realized the influence that they truly could have on others by developing a really deep understanding of their students' needs and their perspectives just by simply listening. As their trusting guide, you can help them build supportive relationships with their peers. Some students really may need this social emotional piece. They may need you to help them interact with their peers, model it, set up role-playing scenarios. Students helping each other benefit one another in so many different ways. So here's a checklist of ways to build some reading relationships in your classroom or daycare center. Communicate what those reading goals are in a simple and positive way. We use like actual targets, brightly colored rainbow targets. What are our reading goals? They could be simple, they could be just the number five for five words. We want to recognize five sight words this week. If you're in a daycare center, you want your students to be able to name five things. You're working on oral language development. Just make those reading goals simple and make them positive. And of course, praise and encourage students abundantly. Build a social safety network for each of those students. Make sure that they have their own safety network so that they can have social interactions that are going to have positive outcomes. Have them name at least one adult that they can talk to about reading. And perhaps to build that really deep relationship with somebody so they can help define and name and begin to figure out ways of how they can tackle those fears. You can also support them by creating reading buddies, peer partners, and other intentional partnerships within the classroom, the school, and even in the community. Building peer reading social groups in which each student feels that they belong is going to be super important. And of course, you want to expose students to many, many positive reading role models. Like what does it look like and feel like and sound like to truly be a really proficient reader? Communicate and coordinate this with parents and family members and build positive reading relationships with all of your students' families. The next thing you're really going to focus on is promoting social emotional growth. Our students may not have those skills to deal with their reading fears and anxieties, but we can help them develop them. And this is something that you can also follow through with having families support this as well at home. One way is using daily reading practices that promote self-directed learning and resilience to support social emotional growth. We can also make sure that our reading expectations are reasonable and that we discuss what to do when things don't go as planned. We always will encourage personal stories, literature, role-playing, songwriting, and a whole lot more to help our students develop social emotional growth. Here are some ideas for your classroom. Help students identify what they are afraid of when reading something new. You want to name and interpret that emotion that they're feeling. We use a program called Check In Check Out. It's kind of a tier two behavior intervention, but you could almost take something like this and flip it around where you are checking in with your students. How do you feel prior to reading this book? How do you feel during reading this book? Now, how do you feel after reading this book? And really, again, just identifying that and helping the students know that it can be a process. And of course, providing opportunities for students also to learn about their strengths. So, how can their strengths tie into learning more about how to conquer these reading fears? Helping students form self-empowering ideas about learning to read is also really, really important. In our book, we talk about teaching students simple ways to communicate their needs, also teaching them self-coping skills that can help students accept limitations. A lot of students really struggle with this. Help them understand that effort yields positive outcomes, that building stamina and building endurance. Honestly, folks, this is one of the biggest challenges out there today. This is why I love still being in the classroom because I can see the effects of the COVID-19 shutdown, and these students cannot do anything for very long periods of time. We also want to teach students how to listen to their peers in different reading discussions and provide opportunities for students to practice empathy and understanding what the needs of others around them really are. In our book, we share interest inventories and interviews. This is a simple, easy way to get to know your students better. And not just at the beginning of the year, but as we stress and the joyful reading approaches, this is something that's always happening. It's ongoing. It is helpful to really build authentic reading relationships with each and every student. To do that, you must truly understand what interests them. What motivates them, what drives their desire to read, and even the things that help them understand what doesn't motivate them, what actually makes them not want to read. Sometimes it's a certain kind of subject or it's the way certain illustrations are. All kinds of different factors go into that. But throughout the year, gather some of these observational notes, have those conversations, have rich conversations with your students one-on-one. Ask them questions and make sure you record those individual responses. I've created a simple inventory for you, an interest inventory. It's on the website and it's shared if you've purchased our book, or you can find out more on my website at www.genapeppin.com. The more information that you get from your students will truly help you to get to know them better. You really want to spend some time listening to them. What are their perspectives? What are their fears and what have they accomplished outside of the school realm that you are not familiar with? Of course, when it's possible, have them complete these interest inventories throughout the year. And even for the students that are too young to complete them on their own, you can do them together. Our interest inventory has simple sentences and actually like smiley faces and sad faces. So they're easy to complete. You know what? These completed interest inventories are also an amazing reference that when you're talking with parents and families about specific desires and needs of their child during parent teacher conferences or during progress monitoring check-ins, it could be such a great reference for you to have those conversations with families, and it's also an excellent reference for student goal setting. One of the best parts of teaching social emotional reading strategies is using the power of yet. We know many of our students will find learning to read super frustrating. And I have another podcast on this. It should never hurt. We need to model how to actually remain hopeful and even happy during these super rough patches. We need to make sure we provide opportunities for students to feel all of those emotions. Let them feel them, let them feel them deeply. And let them feel even frustration. It's okay. It's so important to teach our students how to embrace these feelings as well as their mistakes. Because recognizing that mistakes actually lead to learning. For those of you that are not familiar with this, this is called growth mindset. Carol Duat came up with such a brilliant approach, and it really means keeping an open mind. It means teaching resilience and optimism. A growth mindset means showing our students how to develop and embrace positive attitude also about reading. Attitude is everything. A great way to prepare our students for these upcoming plus is to practice turning negative phrases into positive ones. One way to do that, of course, in building reading resilience at the same time, is to promote the power of yet. This is one of my absolute favorite activities because it truly gives me insight into how my students view their motivation. It helps me to see what is really, really important to them. And it helps them also realize that anything is possible. You can have your students use this personal poster. Again, it's one of the things shared if you've purchased the book. You can also simply Google the power of yet, and you will see that it'll say something like, I can do this, but I can't do that, and you know, dot dot dot yet. So it's a really fun way to see what a student thinks that they're really good at and what they know they need to improve in. You can complete this activity with your students as you model it. You can work on it individually, or you can have some time in practice. Course share, celebrate, and display your students' answers all over the walls. I want to talk a little bit more about another strategy to use is sharing social stories. Search your memory for a time you were truly afraid, or you made a big mistake. Maybe it was when you failed at something, such as a test or work of art, and you really just had to try again and again. Maybe it's that time when you skip breakfast and forgot to bring your lunch to school and you own you wound up hungry all day. You want to work on this story so it's genuinely entertaining and inspiring. Be sure it's something your students can relate to and then share your story over and over again. Social stories like these help connect emotions to language, which is so powerful. And they help our students develop social emotional awareness. They can also help them understand themselves and begin to empathize with others. Children need opportunities to understand how to really express these emotions and especially fears. Model that with social stories. Social stories provides this great platform for you to do this. And of course, be sure to use some crazy facial expressions when telling them. Be sure to model how to use words, how to deal with being frustrated or sad or disappointed, angry, and even anxious. One thing we know is a child will respond however the adults around them do. Human emotions are super contagious. We know that our students that are coming from those high stress homes or events are constantly monitoring their environment to gauge whether or not they belong there. So they need immediate feedback. They need more modeling of how to respond to certain situations. And social stories provides the perfect platform to do this in. Eric used to tell his students the story of the day. He burnt a big tray of his delicious homemade lasagna. He says smoke was pouring out of the oven, the fire alarm went off, and his entire apartment building had to evacuate. Firefighters arrived, sirens were blaring, and firefighters raced into the building and put out his flaming lasagna. Eric stood outside embarrassed as the fireman carried out his char dinner. His students would laugh and laugh and laugh as he told this story over and over again, and they loved it. And they learned an important message. We all mess up, we all make mistakes. I love to connect real life stories like that to reading, and I think you might too. So, for example, you can create your own book based on a real life story. Just use some simple graphics. Pair your book with a trade book your students know and they really love. Wrap up your reading by talking about how you too made mistakes and you were learning to read. But the important thing is you kept trying. The message will be really clear. We are all imperfect, and wonderful things can come from making mistakes. Another way that you can approach this is tell empowering stories. Empowering stories help you to build optimism. You can model and then discuss this with your students. Talk to them about how to actually shift and reframe your thought processes. You can practice affirmations with them. One of my favorite things to do is have your characters actually search for ordinary good in your world. Another strategy would be to teach resiliency with picture books. When Eric and I first met, I was using Pete the Cat, I love my white shoes, to teach my students about having a positive attitude. I had actually emailed him to ask permission to use this book on my blog. And he checked out my blog, which contained a description of my project, and we began a conversation about early reading. It's one of my favorite stories to tell. And that's where it all began. Our students often struggle with facing obstacles, more so than not. They need skills to know what to do when they encounter these bumps in the road. In other words, they need resilience. Using Pete the Cat, I love my white shoes, gives us the opportunity to explore and talk to our students about what to do when they face obstacles. In this book, Pete faces a lot of challenges, which which of these challenges then can invite conversations about overcoming frustration. You can have your students talk about all the different ways Pete stays positive throughout the book. Expose them to these things daily, of course, through a variety of rich literature. Here are some of the things to look for when you're picking different books and texts to talk about and read with your students. Of course, resiliency, perseverance, hopefulness, self-care, regulating emotions, and how to calm the mind. Another big one is managing energy. And most importantly, through all of these literary experiences, help them to make deep, really, really deep, meaningful life connections. Keep in mind our students come from a variety of different backgrounds and they have diverse needs. And experiences in and out of the classroom are always processed from the bottom up. So we're almost in a state of reactive first because our brain is actually organized to act and feel before we even think. So keep that in mind as you are picking out text to read with your students. Let's jump back to the joyful reading approach and think about again how we can tie social emotional reading strategies in with the overarching approach of immersing students in joyful and engaging reading experiences throughout the day, day after day, and all year long. We want to seamlessly weave these into our daily routines and activities, our lessons, and build students' basic reading skills and knowledge, which will of course prepare them for successful reading instruction. What we really want is to take the joyful reading approach and lead our students to love books, enjoy reading, and see themselves as readers. Joyful and engaging shared reading experiences are any reading opportunity that is enjoyable, participatory, involves meaningful activity between children and cherished caregivers and teachers. The joyful reading approach views learning as a deeply human process and it optimizes shared reading experiences for wonderful reading outcomes. Remember, it works with all curriculum and supports all forms of reading instruction. It can work harmoniously with purposeful reading and writing activities and research informed direct instruction. It is in that power that joy happens. Most importantly, remember that you want to pair reading with plut. The brain develops in response to the environment it's in. So create environments where children can thrive. You have the power to make great things happen. Create better reading experiences for your students and create joyful shared experiences throughout the day. Bring back the magic and joy of learning to read. Ignite hope that everyone can become a reader. Bring back the magic and joy of learning to read. Ignite hope that everyone can become a reader and truly celebrate that process. Eric and I hope you will put the power of joyful reading to work in your school, classrooms, and daycare centers today. Because it's needed now more than ever. These are just a few of the many ways to incorporate social emotional reading strategies into joyful reading experiences. Look for more topics and easy make and takes, strategies, and tips each week. Thanks again for joining me here today. I am here to help you make powerful changes, and I look forward to working with you again next week.