In this study, the orientation of the first-grade primary school students to school was ensured by creative drama activities. Activities that lasted 21 hours were applied to ensure that the students adapted to the school, their friends, their teachers, school staff, and places in the school. Parents, classroom teacher, 19 students and two…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of instructional methods based on Constructivist theory and cooperative learning on first-grade students' mathematical learning achievement and social awareness. Method: A natural sample of 30 children aged 6-7 years old was cluster-randomized into an experimental group. Mathematical…

Creating Compassion is an empathy-focused creative arts curriculum designed to provide short-term, low-cost, high-quality social-emotional learning (SEL) to communities and settings with limited resources. The present study sought to determine whether Creating Compassion was effective for increasing displays of prosocial behaviors and broad SEL…

Social skills are dynamic developmental constructs typically measured using assessments developed via cross-sectional methods. The measurement model of derivatives (MMOD), a factor analytic approach targeting individual growth trajectories, was used to evaluate the longitudinal factor structure of the Social Skills Improvement System--Rating…

Social-emotional learning (SEL) curricula are being increasingly implemented with young children; however, access to comprehensive programs can be prohibitive for programs limited by finances, time, or other factors. This article describes an exploratory case study that investigates the use of creative activity in the direct promotion of empathy…

An awareness of school-related antecedents of children's physiological stress at the beginning of school helps educators to prevent and mitigate children's stress, the one of the major obstacles to their well-being and academic progress. We aimed to study the effect of reading skills and social competence on first-grade students' salivary cortisol…

In the realm of elementary education, the influence of teacher empathy on Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) remains a critical yet nuanced aspect. This qualitative study explores the integral role of teacher empathy in shaping SEL environments in K-5 classrooms. Teacher empathy, defined as the capacity to perceive situations from students'…

As a teacher educator, I prepare preservice students for regular reflection about teaching and learning by incorporating design-thinking and storytelling. In order to facilitate more interactive reflection on students' early teaching experiences, I developed the design-debrief--a classroom activity that asked students to story their teaching…

With the poverty cycle continuing and many communities facing an increased number of lower socioeconomic status (SES) families, it is essential to understand the perception teachers have regarding students living in poverty and how teachers' life experiences may differ from those of students who come from lower SES families. Many constructs,…

This article presents seven social justice-oriented model activities for 1st and 2nd grade Korean-English bilingual students. Considering the age and language ability of the target students, two picture books addressing social justice issues were selected as a main instructional material for those activities. Through the suggested model…

Teachers' efforts to manage classroom social dynamics are associated with students' social and academic adjustment, but the determinants of teachers' use of social dynamics management strategies have remained unexplored. Multiple potential determinants of strategy use were examined in a study of 164 teachers and their 2986 students in 164 1st,…

This past school year, the author set out to develop lessons that incorporated the design thinking process into her literature exploration curriculum in the school library. Design thinking is a term that the author has heard many times over the past few years in the context of education. Design thinking has been incorporated into the school…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a universal social skills program, the Social Skills Improvement System Classwide Intervention Program (SSIS-CIP; Elliott & Gresham, 2007), for students in first grade. Classrooms from 6 elementary schools were randomly assigned to treatment or business-as-usual control conditions.…

The literature on service-learning outcomes in pre-adolescent children is relatively sparse. Empathy (i.e., overall, cognitive, affective) and community engagement (i.e., connection to the community, civic awareness, civic efficacy) were assessed in 155 first, second, and fifth graders (n = 79 males; n = 76 females) using a pre/post design for a…

At its best, service learning involves students making meaningful connections to their own community and feeling empowered by the experience. Unfortunately, in the elementary years, student service-learning is often a one-shot effort in which adults make decisions for children, preventing them from truly having a hand in the project's direction…