Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in Story Time: Key Skills for Kindergarten Readiness

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in Story Time: Key Skills for Kindergarten Readiness is a poster in the 2020 PNLA Virtual Poster Session. We encourage you to engage in discussion by leaving a comment on the page. The author of the poster will respond to comments the week of August 4-7, 2020.

Presenter: Jenn Carter, King County Library System (WA)

After completing two months of online story time, I paused to ask for feedback from parents and educators.

When asked about kindergarten readiness in the COVID era, parents and educators again and again requested that the library emphasize Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in online story time. Skills like compassion, kindness, cooperation and perseverance are seen by educators as some of the most important skills we can be teaching young children. More than math and reading, SEL are the skills that will allow our children to succeed in the future.

Concurrently, the tragic murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor brought to light a desperate need in our communities to work harder to teach essential SEL topics like: anti-racism, empathy and courage. I decided to pull up my old SEL curriculum and adapt these concepts to an online story time program for the Summer of 2020.

This nine week curriculum for Preschool Story Time was piloted in person in the Fall of 2019 and is now being adapted for online story times and possible take-home packets for Summer of 2020.

For each of the nine topics, I have three elements: librarian story time guide, one page reference sheet for parents with booklist; and an activity sheet with directions to a hands-on learning activity.