First Steps to Emotional Literacy

A programme for children in the FS & KS1 and for older children who have language and/or social communication difficulties

Kate Ripley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9781138406797
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135395582
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

Kate Ripley's work in the topical area of Emotional Literacy has shown that children must first learn to discriminate and label their own emotions before they can focus on understanding other people's. This comprehensive programme is designed to assist early years practitioners help children to achieve these first important steps, the pack consists of:

• theoretical rationale – long and short version
• how the programme fits within the current legislative framework
• baseline assessment details
• pratical strategies to support the programme
• evaluation from pilot study
• bibliography and recommended materials.

In addition to the book there are downloadable resources containing a twenty minute video film showing behaviour to be addressed and intervention in action, a demonstration in powerpoint to show to colleagues and stories to use for baseline assessment.

CHAPTER 1
An overview of the First Steps Programme

Target audience: who might find the programme useful?

• Teachers in Early Years and Foundation Stages;

• Area special educational-needs co-ordinators (SENCOs) and pre-school SENCOs for use in pre-school settings;

• Sure Start;

• Portage home visitors;

• Staff in nurseries and day-care provision;

• Teachers and other adults working with children who have language impairment, social communication difficulties and autistic spectrum disorder (ASD);

• Behaviour-support teams.

The structure of the First Steps Programme

The programme is divided into two sections. For Part I the focus is on intrapersonal skills: the ability to recognise, define, label and discuss our own feelings and emotions. Children learn to:

• recognise their own emotional states;

• use words to label a range of emotions;

• identify the triggers for their own emotional states;

• talk about past and future emotions;

As part of group discussion they:

• learn that other people experience similar emotional states;

• understand that the triggers for others may be the same as for themselves … or not.

The second part of the programme extends the range of emotions that children are able to recognise and discuss. It also turns the focus to the actions that might be triggered by strong states of arousal. Group discussion helps children to:

• recognise how they might choose to respond to different emotional states;

• review the range of responses that others might make in response to the same emotional trigger;

• consider the immediate consequences of different action choices in response to states of arousal both to themselves and to the other people who might be involved;

• consider the longer-term consequences of different choices of action.

Introduction to the First Steps to Emotional Literacy Programme

The importance of emotional literacy in the educational context

Learning to understand our own emotions and those of other people is a key part of becoming a socially competent person who is able to establish and sustain positive relationships with other people. The social, emotional and behavioural skills (SEBS) which are involved ‘underlie almost every aspect of school, home and community life, including effective learning and getting on with other people’ (DfES 2003). These skills have been variously described as emotional literacy, emotional intelligence and social and emotional competence. In the educational context, the terms ‘emotional literacy’ or ‘social and emotional competencies’ have been favoured rather than ‘emotional intelligence’, perhaps in an attempt to distance these ideas from that of intelligence as simply ‘IQ’.

The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) guidance (2003) identifies a range of skills that children who have good social and emotional competences are able to bring to the learning experience.

• to be effective and successful learners;

• to make and sustain friendships;

• to deal with and resolve conflict effectively and fairly;

• to solve problems with others or by themselves;

• to manage strong feelings such as frustration, anger or anxiety;

• to recover from setbacks and to persist in the face of difficulty;

• to work and play cooperatively;

• to compete fairly and win or lose with dignity and respect for competitors.

These are already skills for life and so it is not surprising that the advantages of being emotionally literate extend beyond the educational context. Goleman (1996) reported that emotional literacy is a significant contributor to success in life as measured by a range of criteria, that it increases resilience to the stresses of targets and competition and plays a role in resistance to mental-health problems.

The development of children’s SEBS is considered to be ‘fundamental to school improvement’ and the Every Child Matters agenda because it contributes to a range of relevant factors:

• greater educational and work success;

• improvements in behaviour;

• increased inclusion;

• improved learning;

• greater social cohesion.

The DfES guidance (2003) on the social and emotional aspects of learning (SEAL) offers a welcome whole-curriculum framework for all pupils in Foundation Stage. However, the first part of this curriculum, red level, assumes that children have already had early experiences at home that will enable them to discriminate and label basic emotional states. Not all children will have had or have been able to access these experiences and the First Steps Programme is designed to help such children. The programme has been structured to lead into the DfES curriculum and is, therefore, relevant to all children in Early Years and Foundation Stages. It is also relevant for older children who experience difficulties with language or who have an ASD.

The First Steps Programme was devised to support early social learning at a time when issues of behaviour, social inclusion and attendance are priority concerns within the education system.

Learning to understand emotions

Emotional literacy is defined as ‘The ability to recognise, understand, handle and appropriately express (our) own emotions and to recognise, understand and respond appropriately to the expressed emotions of others’ (Faupel 2003).

This definition makes it clear that children first learn about their own emotions and then progress to learning about the emotions of other people. This distinction between personal competences (intrapersonal skills) and social competencies (interpersonal skills) is recognised by the DfES in the Primary National Strategy: Developing Children’s SEBS. Unfortunately, many social skills/emotional-literacy programmes assume that children have the necessary intrapersonal awareness and start the intervention with interpersonal skills. The First Steps Programme starts with the development of intrapersonal skills.

The first stages of learning to be emotionally literate start pre-school, in the home, when quality interactions take place between the child and his or her main carer. Small children may experience very strong emot...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• What’s on the CD-ROM?
• CHAPTER 1 An overview of the First Steps Programme
• CHAPTER 2 The theoretical framework for the First Steps Programme
• CHAPTER 3 The selection of children for the First Steps Programme
• CHAPTER 4 Setting up a First Steps Programme
• CHAPTER 5 The First Steps to Emotional Literacy Programme
• CHAPTER 6 The First Steps to Emotional Literacy Programme
• CHAPTER 7 Supplementary programme for Part I
• CHAPTER 8 Ideas for more activities
• Book Bank
• Resources
• References
• Index