Helping pupils become emotionally literate adults is an important part of your role as a teacher. A good way to implement SEAL across the whole school is to start with assemblies. Assemblies can be important opportunities to instill learning about life, away from academic pressure. Secondary Assemblies for SEAL is a collection of 40 assemblies that will support you in implementing social and emotional aspects of learning within your school, providing you with inspirational stories about people who have succeeded in the face of adversity. Experience shows that children learn better when their emotional needs are being met. As adults, we know that when we are faced with serious personal issues like bereavement, relationship difficulties or financial stress, it is harder to concentrate on our work and other daily responsibilities. Anxiety, fear and sadness are intrusive feelings that can incapacitate our ability to absorb information or learn new skills. Despite this, we have sometimes shown a naive expectation that young people will come to school ready to learn.
Any emotional literacy curriculum will work towards helping children make the link between feelings, thinking and behaviour. How we are feeling affects our thinking, but it is also the case that what we are thinking affects the way we are feeling. Our thoughts and our feelings together have a strong impact on our behavioural reactions. The assemblies are categorised into five sections in line with five key aspects: empathy, managing feelings, motivation, self-awareness, social skills. The message within each assembly is either implicit or more explicit, though there is considerable overlap of social and emotional learning between the sections. Each assembly is structured in the same way with: Engagement - this gives the main background to the story - it is the section that will set the scene for the rest of the assembly; Response - this part of the assembly draws a parallel between the story being told and the SEAL aspect dealt with in the section; Meditation and prayer - this is not affiliated to any particular religion and therefore can be used in any school setting. The assemblies are designed to be delivered to a large, mixed-ability audience.
They do, however, contain additional material that can be used within the wider curriculum: Leading questions can be used within form tutorial or PSHE lessons to extend students' response to the issues raised; Something to do contains a variety of activities to reinforce understanding of those issues.
- ISBN10 1907567143
- ISBN13 9781907567148
- Publish Date 31 March 2010 (first published 1 January 1999)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Optimus Education eBooks
- Format eBook
- Pages 170
- Language English