SECOND STEP E-Newsletter
February 2011
Thriving at School with the K–5 SECOND STEP Program
Our vision at Committee for Children is “Safe children thriving in a peaceful world.” We know that an important part of thriving for a child is being successful at school. Before creating the new edition of the SECOND STEP program for elementary school, we examined the research on academic success and brain development to find ways to boost the program’s impact on academic success, the core mission of schools.
We discovered that there are specific skills that help students manage their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors (known as self-regulation) and therefore directly support their academic success and social and emotional competence. We have integrated these skills into the program both through new lessons throughout, and in the younger grades through specific brain-building games.
Skills for Learning
Four new skills are explicitly taught and practiced in a brand new unit in Grades K–3. These Skills for Learning are also known as academic enablers, or teacher preferred behaviors. No matter their label, they comprise a set of key skills that help students manage their learning in the classroom. They are also integrated into the Empathy Unit in Grades 4 and 5. The skills are as follows:
1. Listening: Students learn what their ears, eyes, bodies, and brains are doing when they listen. They practice this explicit way of listening in every lesson.
2. Focusing attention: Students learn what it means to really focus and sustain attention. In kindergarten and first grade, students learn a technique that helps them understand and experience focusing attention in a concrete way.
3. Using self-talk: Students learn to use self-talk to stay on task, ignore distractions, and remember and follow directions.
4. Being assertive: Students learn and practice to assertively ask for help with their learning. This is particularly important for students from lower income families, English language learners, or those who are struggling academically. These students will often not speak up when they are stuck.
These Skills for Learning are interdependent with skills sometimes known as executive-function skills. We implicitly help students develop these skills through brain-building games in every lesson in K–3. To play these short, highly engaging games successfully, students must use the following:
- Attention: the ability to direct, focus, and shift attention while screening out or ignoring distractions.
- Working memory: the ability to remember and use information, such as a teacher’s directions.
- Inhibitory control: the ability to stop automatic but inappropriate actions or reactions and use appropriate behaviors, such as raising a hand before speaking.
Students are encouraged to reflect on how their Skills for Learning—listening, focusing attention, and self-talk—also helped them play the game successfully.
Our pilot teachers were very excited about these new additions. They quickly observed an improvement in students’ self-regulation skills and noticed an increase in their teaching time.
"I’ve really enjoyed the hands-on activities for the kids and the games and it really gets them moving, gets them using their hands and gets them engaged in the curriculum."
—Sarah Sullivan, First Grade Teacher, TOPS K–8 School, Seattle, WA
We are excited too! This new edition of the SECOND STEP program represents a step closer to our vision.
Bridgid Normand, M.Ed.
Program Developer
Committee for Children
