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Planning a SEEL Teaching Activity

Be Aware of What Should Be Included in the Mini-Unit

Planning SEEL lessons is easy and very flexible. There are four main parts to an activity:

1. Classroom context
2. Curriculum component
3. Theme, student interest, or book
4. Playful activity

Each of these parts will be included in every SEEL instructional activity. The planning process may begin with ideas for any one of these four parts. The steps below show how you may begin a plan for teaching.

Find Resources

The SEEL Teaching Resources database under the SEEL Resources tab in the Web site menu contains a variety of SEEL materials. Teachers may download a SEEL activity, mini-unit etc. and build instruction around that resource.

Your mind, of course, is your best resource. Teachers are encourged to create lessons or activities of their own. Once you get a feel for the basic SEEL principles and instructional activity components, engaging activities and interactive conversations will come naturally to you.

Select Classroom Contexts

SEEL instruction for a selected target may be implemented in any one or                                                                  combination of the following classroom contexts:

• Beginning of the day
• Transition--lining up, moving to a different part of the room, going to or coming from recess
• Large group sessions
• Small group sessions
• Centers
• Snack time
• End of the day

Select A Target

The literacy targets should be purposefully chosen considering the overall developmental level of the students and individual needs of class members. A basic sequence is given on the SEEL calendar, but alterations may be made if needed.

Some teachers prefer to plan their sequence around curricular areas rather than specific targets.  These areas include print awareness, letter recognition, letter/sound association, alliteration, rhyming, vocabulary, word recognition, and story comprehension.   

Choose/Create Acivities

Instructional activities for teaching the targets must, of course, be appropriate to the classroom context(s) in which they will be presented. You may choose a theme for one instructional session, a series of sessions, or cross-curricular integration. Be sure that your choices will allow plenty of opportunities for engaging and playful activities along with  interactive conversations.

Themes

Themes can be especially meaningful for students when they center around children's interests or a book the class has read.  Some popular themes include

• Halloween,
• dinosaurs,
• family,
• vacations,
• a trip,
• farms, or
• a book title such as The Wiggle Book or There's a Nightmare in My Closet

Playful Activities

The availability of playful, engaging activities is limited only by a teacher's imagination--and ability to use the SEEL Teaching Resources database.  Some of the following have been particularly  successful:

• Interactive Story.  This can be as simple as children filling in key words during a story or chanting a refrain.  Intermediate levels of involvement include responding to open-ended questions; making predictions; discussing story elements such as character, setting, plot, or themes; drawing pictures; role playing; pantomiming etc.  For stories that children really love, the teacher might bring props and/or costumes and have children do a full story dramatization.

• Games.  With a little creativity on the part of teacher and students, games can be developed for almost any target or theme.  Young children enjoy games that allow them to move around: whether it's coming forward to take a turn with a "fishing pole" or moving around a circle to "tag" someone to give a word ending in /-it/.  Word games, memory games, guessing games, and even board games can be easily adapted and incorporated.

• Make/Do Projects.  Children's minds often focus better when their hands are busy.  The sense of participation that comes from making something or going through a set of motions with classmates stimulates memory and gives children concrete associations for the targets and skills they are learning.

• Music/Dance.  Children can visualize, imagine, dream, and draw to music, as well as move to it and sing with it.  Rhythmic chants, clapping games, simple instruments (drums, bells, tambourines, shakers, kitchen spoons, keys, and even cell phones) can produce wonderful SEEL-level music.  Most children enjoy singing. Teachers (and/or children) can use well known tunes and create lyrics illustrating targets or enhancing chosen themes.  Most children also enjoy moving.  Let them move rhythmically to music which you can relate to targets. ("Let's do an /f/ dance"--float, fly, flit, flutter, flop."

 Ready Made SEEL Mini-Units, Activities, and Mini-Books

SEEL researchers have developed an inventory of mini-units accompanied by mini-books, graphics and other resources that are made available on this Web site. Click on Teaching Resources to view these resources by time of year, curriculum component, and literacy target.

Visual Guide to A Week of SEEL Instruction

A simple visual guide to planning is included  below. To use this form, record the contexts, the literacy curriculum components, the theme, and the activities you will use on Day 1. Click on this planning form to download and print it for your own use.

By now you should have a page full of notes for possibilities.  Play mix and match.

Collaborate in Creating SEEL Instruction Plans

Instruction is especially effective when planned collboratively with colleagues on a grade-level team. Collaboration can take many forms. SEEL recommends using Lesson Study to guide planning and improvement of individual lessons. Lesson Study can be the process by which peer teams confer, plan, teach, evaluate and improve lesson effectiveness.

Lesson Study

Lesson study is a process in which teachers collaboratively plan a SEEL lesson and select one teacher on their team who will teach the co-created lesson. The SEEL lesson will be observed or even videotaped, and then teachers will review and provide feedback. Based on the review and feedback of team members, the team will revise the SEEL lesson and another teacher will implement the lesson in his/her classroom. This process will be completed when each of the teachers on the team has had an opportunity to implement the revised lesson.

Peer Team Meetings

Participants operate within a peer team in which teachers work and plan together, visit and review classrooms, and participate in discussions and decision-making procedures (Hord, 2004). Peer team meetings will provide participating teachers with the opportunity to collaborate on the implementation of the SEEL framework, which includes consistency of strategy use, transfer of skills, and increased focused instruction for students (Beck & Dennis, 1997; Ehren, 2000; Simon, 1995). During these meetings teachers and SEEL project staff will share integrated lesson/activity plans, discuss adaptations, and provide mutual support in making instructional decisions based on assessment data.

School Wide Collaboration

The early childhood teacher becomes the SEEL coordinating teacher for an expanded team made up of professionals and para-professionals who provide services to the teacher’s students. The intent is to plan and coordinate the application of SEEL principles throughout the services matrix for each student. This coordination is facilitated as needed by SEEL staff as a part of professional development and also as a follow-up activity in subsequent years of SEEL implementation.