Social Emotional Learning Projects

I am embedding social emotional learning into many of my technology projects this year, beginning with third and fourth graders. I am using Michelle Garcia Winner's work (socialthinking.com) on problem solving with my fourth grade students. This screenshot comes from Jill Kuzma (jillkuzma.wordpress.com) and is an example of the resources I am using.

Students began by brainstorming problems on a wall I created with padlet.com. They were very excited to use a shared digital space. After writing many ideas, I presented the idea of a continuum of problems. We categorized our problems into "small", "medium" and "big." 

Focusing on the small problems, students selected one to use in a comic strip. The students' task was to have two characters interacting to solve a small problem. We used Google APPs presentations, with each slide being a frame of the comic. The idea of using presentations for comics came from Eric Curts. Students used PNG formatted images from openclipart.org. Students were able to show their creativity with graphic design and idea generation.

Our next steps in this project will include peer review/commenting, group editing and design improvement. Each of these process will be accomplished by easily sharing documents.