SEEL Curriculum

The SEEL curriculum provides a sequence to help children develop coding skills and make meaning. The specific SEEL Curriculum literacy components are those identified by the National Reading Panel (2000) as important for developing strong reading and writing skills. 

The curriculum develops a base in phonological awareness so that phonics skills can be mapped onto an understanding of how words are constructed (Adams, 1990; Cunningham, 1990; Gillon, 2004; Troia, 2004). Additionally it stresses comprehension and meaning  so that decoding can become interrelated with text comprehension. The sequence of skills in the curriculum spreads performance across curricular areas and across time of the school year, builds on prior knowledge, provides detailed objectives, and incorporates core curriculum standards and benchmarks.

 Explicit Instruction Across Multiple Experiences

SEEL instruction creates multiple experiences with literacy targets through a variety of activities over an array of classroom settings. Instruction is taken into daily routines of the classroom by incorporating meaningful literacy activities throughout the school day, including times not traditionally used for instruction, such as snack or transition times. This use of literacy conversations and activities across settings increases the amount of time for students to respond and experience reinforcement and feedback from the teacher. Increasing the frequency of student exposure to target skills ensures greater opportunity to learn them.

 Arts Integration

The arts encourage students to explore and express their feelings and ideas through different media.  Since many children learn more effecively through seeing, listening, moving, and touching than through words alone, integrating the arts with literacy provides important opportunities for all children to become personally involved and experience success in lessons centered around the literacy targets.  For example, as students draw, paint, or work with clay, they associate visual and tactile experiences with the targets, which implants the targets more firmly in their minds.  As they sing or dance, their minds and bodies feel the inherent rhythm of  language, which is not easily forgotten.  Story dramatization is one of the most popular SEEL activities, as students literally step into the experience of the story.

SEEL achieves these goals through playful practice, making learning how to read and write both engaging and motivating. Children enthusiastically practice new literacy target skills though games, songs, chants, movement, visual art, and drama--enhanced through socially constructed conversations between teacher and students.