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Education Dive
Helping middle-schoolers build self-regulation skills remotely
Lauren Barack
Sept. 9, 2020
Dive Brief:
Middle school students may need assistance to manage online learning,
as they’re being asked to tap into adult-level management skills they
may have yet to fully develop, Edutopia suggests, citing the best
practices of Jody Passanisi, the director of middle school at Gideon
Hausner Jewish Day School in Palo Alto, California.
Time-management is one skill that can be fostered virtually, which
teachers can support by having students start set alerts for class
times and also adopt digital calendars for their week. Another skill is
learning how to organize, with educators encouraging pupils to set up
their own learning spaces and adjust as needed.
By setting aside time daily for students to ask questions, educators
can help them develop self-advocacy skills. And by creating
opportunities for small group work, educators can help students learn
to build connections and depend on each other, which may also help stem
feelings of isolation as remote-learning continues this year.
Dive Insight:
Middle school years are a crucial transition period from childhood to
young adulthood, and there are steps educators can take to help
students develop self-regulation and other core emotional milestones
they need to reach, even in remote environments.
Fulton County Schools in Georgia has broken down, by grade, different
exercises educators can use with students to support social-emotional
learning. Some include helping students develop more awareness and
sensitivity to other people’s needs and behaviors, even through a
virtual connection.
One lesson, for example, has students perform an act of kindness,
reflect on how that action made them feel, and then consider what they
could do the following day. Another suggests writing a letter to
someone who influenced their life, calling them and reading that
letter, and, again, thinking about how that action made them feel
personally.
The New York City Department of Education also posts grade-appropriate
suggestions, including an online booklet for middle-schoolers with
journal pages that prompt students to answer questions such as, “How do
you deal with stress?” And the Indiana Department of Education offers
lesson plans, including one on how middle-schoolers can learn
self-regulation skills by evaluating emotional stress responses they’ve
experienced and come up with phrases to use in those moments.
These lessons can help educators scaffold core social-emotional
learning milestones for students even as many remain in remote learning
environments this fall.
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