Lessons Learned: Setting Up SEL Groups for Success

| By: Committee for Children

Recently, two schools in my district were asked to implement a grant that focused on early intervention services for students with behavioral needs. A plan was established, and three of us were asked to implement the idea in two schools.

I will start by giving you a little background about the plan. The groups were designed to be two hours after school, twice a week, for seven weeks. The groups consisted of six kindergarten and first-grade students who were chosen by the administrator or psychologist at the school (they were given less than a week to do this, and teachers were minimally involved in the decision-making process). Several students were considered Tier 2 (PBIS) in that they were receiving extra supports during the school day. The adults leading the groups did not personally work at the schools. Due to scheduling conflicts, different adults worked with the groups on different days. Group activities emphasized reinforcement of Second Step skills taught during the school day, such as listening, ignoring distractions, focusing attention, identifying feelings, waiting your turn, and making friends.

The initial plan was not ideal, and although careful preparation helped divert some problems, constant adjustments were needed to overcome the challenges. Given that experience is a great way to learn, I thought I would share some thoughts based on the lessons I learned in this process.

• Spend time on relationship-building before starting lessons. We did name games, talked about our interests, and had conversations during snack time. In our case, it would have been ideal for the group leader to be someone in the building who already had good relationships with the students.
• Spend as much time as possible on Skills for Learning, and don’t rush. We consistently emphasized focusing attention and listening, and spent a lot of time practicing and reinforcing these skills before we could successfully move on to others. Those Brain Builders really do help with student engagement!
• Involve school staff in the decision-making process, and communicate regularly to ensure follow through. We made ongoing efforts to share our plans with teachers and parents, and to let them know how students were doing in group.
• Keep session times an hour or less. Staying focused after a long day at school is tough for five- and six-year-olds, and two hours was way too much for them!
• Keep the adults consistent. Although we consistently communicated our plans, successes, and challenges with one another, the constant change in adults was difficult for the students to adjust to.  
• Keep the group size small, if possible.
• Keep students as close in age and ability level as possible.
• Select students from classrooms where Tier 1 is being implemented as well.

Hopefully my experiences will be a useful guide if you decide to do something like this. If you have already done something similar, please share some of your thoughts about structuring successful social- emotional learning groups.