New Literacy Project

While researching emotional literacy I am learning many things that I did not previously know. One of the biggest things that surprised me was how often I have seen emotional literacy training happening in schools before with out even knowing it both while I was in school and during my placements while at MSU. Emotional literacy can be taught with separate curriculums or it can be integrated into subject areas. These curriculums include lessons where children role play arguments and difficult decisions, they then work as a class to solve these issues in peaceful and respectable ways. Students can also take turns being the “peace helpers” of the classroom for a certain amount of time, when there is a dispute between students, they will help them work it out. Other ways include given students wordless comics with characters who depict certain feelings and having them give dialog to these comics. Ways emotional literacy can be integrated into writing is when a student is involved in an issue they can write or draw about what happened, this helps because children do not always want to talk about difficult things. Another way they can write about is by filling out an “I message” where they fill in the blanks to this statement, “I feel ____ when you ____ because ____”. Researchers say emotional literacy is a very important factor for success in ones life for example; it has been shown that people with higher emotional intelligence (EIQ) tend to be more successful in life then those with lower EIQ, even if they have the same classical IQ. EIQ includes such things as knowing one's emotions, emotional self-control, motivation and persistence, recognizing emotions of others, and successfully handling relationships. Research has also shown that promoting these social and emotional skills leads to improved academic performance, reduction in negative behavior and an improved social environment. When thinking about my placement right now I do not see much emotional skills training going on but I definitely think it would be very helpful for the students. For example, just last week when I was conducting my book talk one of the students I was working with was very unhappy with her work and even though she was the first one finished and I praised her because her writing was very good, she could not get over a few mistakes she had made. While researching about emotional literacy I found information that described how if a person sees small things as huge failures, they can become depresses or anxious over time. These people need help to see their thoughts more aligned with reality, and this is something that emotional training can help with. The student I was working with could not get over the two tiny mistakes in her paper and if this small nitpicking continues, it could be detrimental for her emotional skills.

In order to teach about emotional literacy I am going to be using the website www.inspriation.com to create a graphic organizer. I chose to create a graphic organizer because I feel that they are very helpful for learning and storing new information yet I have not had much experience actually creating them. By creating a graphic organizer I will not only be able to describe my new literacy in words, but I will also be able to add pictures, videos, and other things that will allow for even more understanding with the topic. I know I am able to learn way better when I have multiple ways to receive the same information and by creating this type of organizer I am able to easily put all of this different information all together in one spot. Even though the information that will be in the graphic organizer will all be things a person could find in a normal print resource, it will be taking all of the information and putting it together in a much more user friendly way. The one thing I am finding challenging while playing around with Inspiration is finding out how to use all of the tools in the correct ways. I am still unfamiliar with all of the things that can be done so I feel as if I am missing out on some features. If the students in my placement were going to be using Inspiration to create their own graphic organizers they would need to understand how to look up credible information and then how to decide what information is important and should be included and what information should not be included. If they were just viewing a graphic organizer they would have to understand how all the information is related. Graphic organizers have many different ways of showing how different ideas are all connected and if the student does not understand this, the organizer will not be very helpful.