Sharnell Jackson explains how LiteracyPlanet’s exercises weave social-emotional learning (SEL) into literacy instruction.
Perseverance and resilience are core SEL skills that integrate well across all subject areas. While students are reading literature about a character’s challenging journey, or learning to persevere through difficult word games, resilience is always relevant to student’s in an adaptive gamified learning environment and teacher’s focus on pedagogy.
The pioneering work by Carol Dweck and Angela Duckworth has shown that the ability to cope and persevere through setbacks and adversity are indeed taught and learned. The LiteracyPlanet student directed mode teaches skills ranging from self-management to responsible decision-making, gamified missions and exercises instill in students real-world application of positive mindsets, resilience, and the grit they need to succeed in school and life through literacy.
LiteracyPlanet’s adaptive gamified program helps educators save time by effectively incorporating SEL concepts into everyday personalized literacy instruction with embedded formative assessments and adaptive diagnostics to monitor the progress of all students.
1. Resiliance
The LiteracyPlanet program gives students’ the opportunity to experience incredible acts of resilience by reading landmark literature passages to study trailblazing individuals and pivotal moments in history. Whether it’s John Steinbeck story of a pearl diver whose life is changed forever after he discovers a great pearl, Railway Children a tale of childhood, loss, and redemption or the Memoir of Helen Keller which covers the first twenty-two years in an inspiring story of courage, patience, and fortitude that showcase incredible acts of resilience.
LiteracyPlanet’s nonfiction texts, demonstrate to students that real-life protagonist overcome adversity and persevere, students can too.
2. Health and Wellness
LiteracyPlanet reading passages teaches students what’s happening in their bodies is the first step to empowering them to take control of their behaviour and their state of mind.
One of the LiteracyPlanet narrative passages is all about ‘Are you healthy enough?’ includes good health advice such as regular exercise, eating a balanced diet, and enjoying good sleep patterns. Another mission discusses the healing effect dogs can have on traumatized victims of crime and tragedy. As students are reading these articles referenced teachers can have them collect strategies for building resilience and create meaningful quotes from fictional as well as real-life heroes.
3. Finding Their Voice
Having opportunities to contribute to the world around them makes young people feel useful and valued, reinforcing SEL competencies such as motivation, goal setting and organizational skills.
LiteracyPlanet narrative passages, mission, student-led exercises and online books inspire students to take active roles in their own communities by having students voice and defend their own opinions in responses and writing exercises. Teachers looking to amplify their students’ voices can identify exercises in LiteracyPlanet quick assign such as ‘Teenspeak’ on whether or not it is compromising literacy standards as more and more teens are bypassing the conventions of Standard English.
With LiteracyPlanet’s SEL-informed comprehensive literacy instruction, we have the power to help young people build the resilience and perseverance they need to be successful today, tomorrow, and throughout their lifetimes.
About the Author: Sharnell Jackson
Sharnell Jackson has more than 35 years of K-12 experience, working with school districts, state departments and regional laboratories nationwide. She has received many awards and honors throughout her career and co-authored Transforming Teaching and Learning Through Data-Driven Decision Making.
