Developing students’ self-management skills to support independent learning

When schools closed for in-person instruction and students shifted to remote learning, they became more responsible for managing their work and schedule. Teachers noticed students struggling with self-management skills and adjusted their social emotional learning scope and sequence to focus on development to support independent learning.

Overview:

At Henry O. Tanner Elementary School, a prekindergarten through eighth grade school in Chicago Public Schools, teachers noted students struggling to work independently from home when the district closed for in-person instruction and moved to remote learning. Given this shift in the learning modality, developing students’ self-management skills became an urgent need for this school as they sought to find a way to support students to complete their learning independently. As such, the school revamped their social emotional learning (SEL) scope and sequence to focus their SEL lessons on self-management.

Approach: To help build the skill of self-management, the school identified three challenge areas and created structured innovations in response to each. The challenges identified were:

1. Staff development – inconsistencies around effectively building relationships with students at home

2. Instructional practices – inconsistent modeling of self-management strategies and how to use them

3. School structures – inconsistent modeling of self-management strategies school-wide and a lack of clarity around who teachers can go to for leadership support around SEL

In response to the challenges identified above, the school launched shifts in three areas:

1. Shifts in staff development

   • Quarterly development for staff and parents to support adults building self-management skills to model for students

   • Quarterly family nights that utilized practices they desired students to use when learning at home independently

2. Shifts in instructional practices

   • Provided constant and consistent reminders to students to integrate self-management throughout the day

   • Increased student modeling of skills and strategies

3. Shifts in school structures

• Clearly defined leaders and goals for this SEL initiative

• Built in school-wide SEL habits and acknowledgements of students using self-management skills

This strategy is a part of TLA’s Hop, Skip, Leapfrog release, which explores the concrete ways in which schools and systems pursued student-centered innovation during COVID-19. Explore the full guide to find additional strategies, insights, and resources.