Formando Vidas SEL

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Learning the Students Way: Student-Centric Approach to SEL

Learning the Students Way: Student-Centric Approach to SEL

Many students struggle to learn effectively with a one-size-fits-all approach to education. It may become difficult for them to fully understand and retain information, causing their performance in school to drop. This struggle can lead to poor student self-esteem, low participation, and a sense of disinterest in learning. Not only is this harmful to the student, but it can affect the classroom environment as well.

Hope Rising takes a better approach: Student-Centric Learning.

To be human is to be uniquely individual. Between personality traits, age, upbringings, and learning style strengths, each student is their own, rapidly growing into an even more unique person.

A key part of engaging in education is understanding how your brain works. How, as an individual, do you approach problem-solving? What kinds of learning come naturally, and what is more difficult? With a deeper understanding of themselves, students can more easily approach their education as a whole.

By learning how they approach problems, they are better equipped to solve them. By knowing their role in a group setting, they are aided in collaborating with others well.

Student-centered learning is very effective, but how can students achieve this kind of awareness?

My Best Me uses Social Emotional Learning in a student-centered way to foster skills to help students effectively and ethically deal with new tasks and challenges. With age and grade-appropriate direction, our curriculum helps teachers talk with their students about how to approach problem-solving, conflict resolution, growth mindsets, goal setting, and more value topics in a way to help students grow.

By approaching these vital skills in an age-appropriate and learner-centered way, students can learn with more confidence, positivity, and success. When students are shown time and time again that they can learn successfully, their curiosity and desire to learn grow.

After being engaged with student-centered learning, you may notice students being more inquisitive and start pursuing learning new things with a sense of excitement and curiosity. Subjects they may have been daunted by before will come alive and become enjoyable to learn.

Student-centered learning isn’t restricted by age or background because of its innate focus on the learner as a person. From PreK through high school, students of all ages can benefit from our curriculum, which teaches the science of Hope and SEL competencies with the student individual in mind.

If you would like more information on our program, please reach out to a member of our sales team.

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June 30, 2021
Keep Young Minds Sharp—Play Games!
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Keep Young Minds Sharp—Play Games!

Summertime is funtime for kids and adults of all ages. It is time off school for most children, but you can help their brains to be sharp when school starts again. I can think of no better way to boost the brain than playing games. Games are a way of teaching children social skills, strategy, math, problem-solving, and language. The kids are having so much fun that they don’t notice they’re learning. Kids today are probably going to find a way to get screen time through television and/or video games, so what we’re focusing on is games away from the screen.

First important tip is: Parents(or Grandparents), participate in the games with your children.

Kids love it when Mom, Dad, or Grandparents play with them. This is also opportunity for you to teach taking turns and good sportsmanship with younger children and strategy to older ones. Of course, the main benefit is the bond you make with your favorite people.

Most all games will have teachable elements for children. The following are some of the classic games. All these classics have “Jr.” versions for younger children who aren’t quite ready for the regular ones.
- Monopoly teaches focusing on cash flow, and counting cash
- Yahtzee teaches decision making and math
- Clue teaches logical thinking and problem solving by process of elimination
- Scattegories teaches word retrieval and related ideas in specific categories
- Scrabble improves spelling, vocabulary and conversation
Other games that are great teachers are Simon and Bop-It. These two are great for the car and both come in travel size and regular size—both portable.

Stay smart. Make memories. Have fun. Play games!

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June 23, 2021
Four Benefits of a Digital Textbook

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Four Benefits of a Digital Textbook

When buying a curriculum for your classroom, it’s important to weigh your options. We offer hard copies and digital copies so you can work with us no matter which avenue you choose. However, there are many benefits to consider when looking at a digital curriculum. Here are four benefits to digital textbooks for you and your students.

Digital Textbooks Are Eco-Friendly

The mass amount of paper and resources used to print textbooks can be a tax on the environment. How the books are disposed of isn’t always environmentally friendly either. If students lose their textbook and it needs to be replaced, that is another book printed. What about when a new edition of the text comes out? The older versions are eventually disposed of and need to be replaced with a new set. The cycle continues until someone chooses a more eco-friendly alternative: a digital textbook. Digital texts can be updated online for each new edition and can’t be lost by students, making their footprint significantly smaller.

Accessibility is Greater in a Digital Textbook

With print textbooks, hard copies rely heavily on text as their primary learning tool. This can be helpful and foster reading practice for many situations, but it isn’t always the best learning solution. If a child is an auditory learner, dyslexic, or struggles with reading large amounts of text at once, listening to their text can make a huge difference in their retention rate. If the student is struggling with reading the text, it can be adapted to an audio file and played as the student reads along, helping them with their reading and knowledge retention.

You Can Easily Search a Digital Textbook

When working on assignments, studying for a test, and refreshing themselves on a concept, students need textbooks to be available in a format that makes them easily searchable. With digital texts, this is instantly easier. Using the search function, hundreds of pages of content are suddenly searchable by keywords. Do you want your student to have a better understanding of how certain concepts connect? Using the keyword search method, they can see every chapter and section that uses that term, allowing them to see how chapters work together.

With the My Best Me curriculum, educator’s receive access to a Digital Teacher Guide, too. This makes searching within the material list, glossary, resource page, and other instruction elements easy! Additionally, there are active hyperlinks to parent guides, student activity pages, and any interactive media used (videos, documents, etc.)

No Waiting for Textbooks

Because digital textbooks have easy, online access, there is no need to wait for an order of textbooks to come in. Transfer students won’t need to share with another student or take home scanned copies for their first few weeks of homework as they wait. By simply ordering online, the student can be provided with their own digital textbook right away to keep them from getting behind by not having the resource they need.

My Best Me can be purchased as a classroom pack of digital licenses. This is perfect for schools utilizing online classrooms, digital learning, or remote opportunities.

Digital textbooks provide advantages for the student, teacher, and school. When considering a curriculum for your classroom, don’t forget the benefits of going digital.

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June 16, 2021
The Impact of Social Emotional Learning

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The Impact of Social Emotional Learning

As an educator, finding ways to help a student battling various academic and social issues can be a real challenge. But integrating social-emotional learning (SEL) techniques can offer much relief. A recent study reveals that SEL can positively impact conduct problems, emotional distress, academics, and drug use for up to 18 years. This piece focuses on the impact of social-emotional learning on the overall life of a student.

What is Social Emotional Learning?

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in education refers to a methodology designed to help students comprehend their emotions and fully interact with those emotions while demonstrating empathy for others. The learned behaviors will then be utilized to help students choose positive, responsible decisions, create strategies to achieve their goals and cultivate positive relationships with those around them.

What Are the Impacts of SEL on a Student?

Academic Achievement

A recent study on the impacts of SEL on the intellectual life of students reveals the program can help increase a student’s test score by 11 percent. Compared to the students who didn’t participate in SEL programs, those who participated recorded improvements in their classroom behaviors and increased their ability to manage stress and depression. The students who benefited from the SEL program also developed more positive attitudes about themselves, the school, and fellow learners.

Positive Life Outcomes

Studies reveal teaching social skills at an early age helps students avoid psychiatric issues, substance abuse problems, and other risky behaviors. Early intervention with SEL programs show outcomes that stretch far into adulthood by minimizing the life risks commonly associated with social problems.

SEL Helps With Trauma

Integrating social-emotional learning programs into your learning and teaching environment can help equip young students with strategies to cope with everyday disappointments, as well as trauma. A recent study revealed a large percent of the young American population has witnessed at least one violent incident in their lifetime.

SEL programs help such students to respond to the effects of traumatic events by equipping them with social-emotional competencies. The programs are designed to re-shape the brain and reverse the effects of chronic stress due to past traumatic events. SEL can be a top-notch tool for repairing the damage of trauma and building lifetime coping skills, especially for the most at-risk students living in poverty and who may have experienced traumatic events.

Reduced Aggression

SEL can help you reduce aggression in a classroom setting so that you focus on imparting knowledge. Several studies reveal students who receive SEL training were 42 percent less likely to display aggressive behaviors in schools. SEL programs integrate mindfulness techniques that effectively reduce reactive behavior and aggression in students.

Let Hope Rising SEL Integrate Hope into Your Classrooms

If your students are struggling in class and your school performance is unimpressive, they could be finding the conventional school and learning environments as sources of anxiety and stress. This could manifest in diminished motivation, engagement and may eventually lead to harmful behaviors. Social Emotional Learning programs have had positive effects on children’s behavioral, social-emotional, and academic lives. Although SEL is not a designated subject such as English or Math, you can weave it into your school’s curriculum and leverage it as a tool to solve some of your pertinent challenges.

If you are looking for a solution to bring SEL to your schools, we invite you to explore My Best Me, our hope-certified SEL Curriculum.

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May 28, 2021
Spring Break Time–Connect with Your Kids

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Spring Break Time–Connect with Your Kids

Spring Break means great opportunities to connect and build better relationships with your children or grandchildren. I can’t think of a better environment to truly connect than when school is out and you are spending light-hearted, fun time with the kiddos. View the article by Clem Boyd, published by Focus on the Family, to get a great resource for the how-to’s of building relationship with your children. He emphasizes: get into their space, keep it real, enjoy family time, do projects together, and be silly. He includes age appropriate ideas.

When choosing activities for Spring Break, movies are fun, but not interactive with your children. Make sure to include outings where you can engage in conversation with your kids. Also, don’t shy away from including their friends, as this can give you even better insight to their world and perceptions. Indoor games along with household projects and family mealtime can also be great opportunities. Don’t let these precious years go by without building these relationships and inputting into your kids’ lives. They want to be heard and understood by you. Your effort in attempting to close the communication gap will be time well spent!

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March 10, 2021