The key to the strong child: Social Emotional Learning

All the objectives mentined in the project were achived. The main main goal of our project was to instill in our students social and emotional learning skills that are considered key to 21st cent...

All the objectives mentined in the project were achived. The main main goal of our project was to instill in our students social and emotional learning skills that are considered key to 21st century skills. We hoped to reveal their potential by developing the skills to recognize, be accountable, empathize, make responsible decisions,and build relationships, which are the five core competencies of social-emotional learning. Therefore, we aimed to understand the root causes of behavioral problems that teachers often observe, find solutions to these problems and replace them with positive gains, and help students develop coping skills in the face of vital issues. Moreover, we wanted to contribute to the improvement of interpersonal relationships in our school, teaching the students, but also the teachers, to manage their own lives and feelings better. We wanted the educational community, teachers, students and families, to be more aware of the importance of developing a healthy mindset. Make children stronger, inspire them to be curious abouth dicovering the world learning new languages as well as improved English skills among teachers working in the project.

All activities in this Erasmus project over the past two years, have been conducted in the participants' classrooms. Most were online and involved collaboration of the other countries: Romania, Turkey,Spain, and Poland. The school from Poland was the coordiantor of the project and cooperate with othe partners to prepare project plan for two years. According to the plan each partner was repsonsible for ceratin topic and prepared activities which were done by children in partner schools. We worked on emotions; first we strated with a training program for teachers, in Adana Turkiye, then through art therapy in Poland , digital games in Spain, educational gaming in Mersin Turkiye and role-playing in Romania. Some other activities have been held in the other guest countries, at their schools with their students, in situ, sharing live experiences. During trips to individual partner countries, they participated in workshops and activities developing the field for which the partner country was responsible. Thanks to this, we broadened our view of games and art therapy classes. We published infomation about our projects on shool websides, each partner set up Facebookpage. There were meetings and trainings for teachers and parents.

We believe that this project created opportunities to implement in the class different practical and interesting activities that significantly contributed to the improvement of communication difficulties, improved their behavioral reactions, teaching children to consume their energy in a beneficial, constructive way. The students and adults involved int he project learned to understand their emotions, to manage them effectively. The project was focused on communication, taking into account the cultural richness and linguistic exchange among participant countries. We held various meetings to keep everyone involved and all tasks updated. Together with the project partners, we have created teaching aids that we can use in working with children and at the same time disseminate them to other teachers who will be involved in emotional and social learning activities. These products include: quizzes about partner countries, mind maps, information posters about emotional and social learning, online books about the legends of partner countries, worksheets, a common song about emotions, online gallery of art works about emotions, relaxation mandala, escape room, scratch activities, wordwall games, an online books about emotions, etc.