Safe
and Sound: An Educational Leader’s Guide to SEL Programs
In 2003, CASEL published Safe
and sound: An educational leader’s guide to social and
emotional learning programs. This guide reviews 80 multiyear, sequenced
SEL programs designed for use in general education classrooms. Included
in this review are both comprehensive and more narrowly focused
programs, such as drug education or anti-violence programs that
can be combined with others. Safe and Sound also offers guidance
to educational leaders on how to integrate normally isolated or
fragmented efforts with other school activities and academic instruction
by providing a framework for “putting the pieces together.”
A second “Illinois Edition” was published in 2005.
It includes the same program reviews and adds information about
the Illinois Social-Emotional Learning Standards, the first such
standards adopted statewide in the U.S. For more on SEL standards
in Illinois, New York State and elsewhere, see this
section of the site.
You can purchase or download
this guide (or the IL version) from CASEL. In the guide you will
find a chart summarizing our review findings for all these programs,
as well as individual program descriptions. Below are links to the
reviewed programs’ web sites, along with brief descriptions.
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Safe and Sound Program Web Sites
Below is a list of the “CASEL Select” programs reviewed
in our educator's guide to programs, Safe
and Sound. These programs were so designated because they provide
outstanding coverage in five essential SEL skill areas; have at
least one well-designed evaluation study demonstrating their effectiveness;
and offer professional development supports beyond the initial training.
Clicking on the program name will take you to the program’s
website.
To find out about the other 60 programs reviewed in Safe and Sound,
or to read CASEL’s descriptions of any of the 80 reviewed
programs, visit the Safe and Sound
section of this site.
*Service-learning component
***Main emphasis on school and
classroom climate
CASEL "Select" Programs
- ***Caring School Community (Child Development Project): This K-6 program focuses on building a school community based on caring relationships between students, teachers, and families. Such caring is expected to increase student attachment to school and mediate positive student social, emotional, and academic outcomes. It stresses good citizenship.
- Community of Caring (Growing Up Caring): A K-12, comprehensive, whole school character education program that emphasizes the five core values of caring, family, respect, responsibility, and trust as important guides for adolescent life choices and decision making related to health, drugs, sex, and staying in school. The program also promotes good citizenship, civic responsibility, and respect for the environment.
- High/Scope Perry Preschool Project: This PreK-3 program creates a learning environment where young children naturally engage in 58 "key experience" activities that foster development of important skills and abilities.These include creative representation, language and literacy, initiative and social relations, movement, music, classification, seriation, number, space, and time.The conceptually- and empirically-based framework is based on five key principles: (1) active learning; (2) supporting children's initiative and understanding their actions; (3) a child-friendly, inviting and home-like learning environment; (4) a consistent daily routine; and (5) ongoing child assessment.
- I Can Problem Solve (ICPS): A PreK-6 interpersonal problem-solving curriculum with 59-83 lessons per year designed to prevent anti-social behaviors and help children learn to generate solutions to everyday problems, consider others' points of view and possible consequences of an act, and arrive at nonviolent solutions to conflict.
- Know Your Body: A K-6 skills-based comprehensive health education curriculum with 49 lessons per year covering health topics such as nutrition, exercise, safety, disease prevention, consumer health issues, dental care, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, and violence prevention, as well as citizenship topics.
- Learning for Life: A K-12 general social skills program with 35-60 lessons per year designed to prepare students to successfully handle the challenges of today's society and enhance their self-confidence, motivation, and self-esteem. Citizenship is addressed through lessons on environmental, social, and other community issues with occasional participation in service-learning activities.
- * Lions-Quest "Skills" series: This K-12 series of curricula focuses on character education, service-learning, and violence and substance abuse prevention. Lions-Quest programs are designed to help students develop the behaviors and skills needed to become healthy and capable adults. With 64-103 lessons per year, this series includes Skills for Growing (K-5), Skills for Adolescence (6-8), and Skills for Action (9-12).The series provides broad coverage of substance abuse prevention, violence prevention, and citizenship.
- Michigan Model Teenage Health Teaching Module: A K-12 comprehensive health education curriculum with 43-58 lessons per year that extensively address health topics including relationships, safety, emotions, physical senses, pollution, exercise, and nutrition. Substance abuse, smoking prevention, and violence prevention/conflict resolution are addressed thoroughly. Healthy sexual development is also covered.
- PATHS: This PreK-6 curriculum provides 30-45 lessons per year designed to promote social and emotional competence, prevent violence, aggression, and other behavior problems, improve critical thinking skills, and enhance the classroom climate. There is broad coverage of violence prevention and citizenship.
- Peace Works: Peace Works is a collection of grade-level-specific conflict resolution curricula— Peacemaking Skills for Little Kids (preK-2), Peace Scholars (3-4), Creative Conflict Solving for Kids (5), Creating Peace, Building Community (6,7), Fighting Fair (8), and Win!Win! (9-12)—offering 16-48 lessons per year. There is also a peer mediation training component starting at fourth grade and going through high school. Based on Marzano's Dimensions of Learning, the program seeks to improve the school and classroom learning environment. There is broad coverage of violence prevention and citizenship.
- Productive Conflict Resolution : This K-12 program includes 32-69 lessons per year and aims to empower students to resolve conflicts without resorting to violence, develop their emotional intelligence, enable them to uphold social justice, become responsible citizens, and participate in creating a caring and cooperative school environment. Broad multiyear coverage of violence prevention includes peer mediation training, understanding conflict, and the role of media in perceptions of violence and bullying.
- Project ACHIEVE: Project ACHIEVE's PreK-8 Schoolwide Positive Behavioral Program and School Safety component includes the Stop and Think Social Skills curriculum, which consists of 20 sequenced "core" and "advanced" skills. The program is designed to promote social skills, conflict resolution, academic achievement, and a positive school climate.
- *** Reach Out to Schools/Open-Circle Program: This comprehensive, year-long, grade-differentiated K-5 social competency curriculum aims to help children become ethical people, contributing citizens and successful learners, and to help schools foster the development of relationships that support safe, caring, and respectful learning communities. The program has three major content areas: creating a cooperative classroom environment, solving interpersonal problems, and building positive relationships.
- Resolving Conflict Creatively & Partners in Learning (from ESR): With 28-51 lessons per year, RCCP's model includes a series of classroom-based SEL curricula, including Resolving Conflict Creatively (K-6), and Conflict Resolution in the Middle School, an extensive staff development component, parent workshops and a peer mediation program. A primary aim of RCCP is to help students develop the social and emotional skills needed to reduce violence and prejudice, form caring relationships, and build healthy lives. Another is to provide schools with a comprehensive strategy for preventing violence and other risk behaviors, and creating caring and peaceable communities of learning. RCCP also provides broad coverage of citizenship.
- *** Responsive Classroom: The Responsive Classroom K-6 approach to teaching, learning, and living aims to create classrooms that are responsive to children's physical, emotional, social, and intellectual needs through developmentally appropriate experiential education. Rather than structured lessons, it is based on six essential components or practices: classroom organization; morning meeting; rules based on respect for self and others and logical consequences of violating these rules; academic choice; guided discovery; and family communication strategies.
- Second Step: With 8-28 lessons per year, this PreK-9 curriculum is designed to develop students' social and emotional skills, while teaching them to change behaviors and attitudes that contribute to violence. The program focuses on teaching empathy, anger management, and impulse control, and provides broad, multiyear coverage of violence prevention.
- *** SOAR: Skills, Opportunity, and Recognition: SOAR intends to create a community of learners through a school-wide K-6 program designed to strengthen instructional practices and increase family involvement. It addresses research-based risk and protective factors and focuses on providing students with skills, opportunities and recognition at school and at home. To develop healthy behaviors in students, the program helps educators and parents learn to consistently communicate healthy beliefs and clear standards for behavior; foster the development of strong bonds to their families, schools, and communities; and recognize the individual characteristics of each young person. One component for parents, Preparing for the Drug Free Years, aims to give parents information and skills to reduce the likelihood of substance abuse by their children.
- Social Decision Making and Life Skills Development: This K-6 program has 25-40 lessons per year and is designed to help children recognize and use their emotions in effectively solving problems in a wide range of real-life situations inside and outside the classroom.
- *** Tribes: A New Way of Learning and Being Together :Tribes TLC PreK-12 program aims to promote learning and human development by creating a positive school and classroom learning environment.The program is designed to help students feel included, respected for their differences, involved in their own learning, and confident in their ability to succeed.
- * Voices: Reading, Writing, & Character Program: Voices is a K-6 integrated, multicultural literature-based, comprehensive reading and character education curriculum. It focuses on six core social skills and values: identity awareness; perspective taking; conflict resolution; social awareness; love and freedom; and democracy. The program provides broad coverage of violence prevention and citizenship.
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Additional Program Web
sites
The following programs were not included in our Safe
and Sound program review, but have either demonstrated positive
impacts, or are new and promising programs.
Incredible Years: (Early childhood, targeted intervention program) The Incredible Years Parents, Teachers, and Children Training Series has two long-range goals. The first goal is to develop comprehensive treatment programs for young children with early onset conduct problems. The second goal is the development of cost-effective, community-based, universal prevention programs that all families and teachers of young children can use to promote social competence and to prevent children from developing conduct problems in the first place."
Facing History and Ourselves 9-12: Facing History and Ourselves offers in-depth professional development services; curricular resources; and ongoing support to educators and students in the areas of history, social studies, and language arts. They strive to help teachers around the world lead their students in a critical examination of history, with particular focus on genocide and mass violence. Facing History's work is based on the premise that we need to—and can—teach civic responsibility, tolerance, and social action to young people, as a way of fostering moral adulthood.
First Steps for Success: (Early childhood, targeted intervention program) An early classroom intervention and collaborative homeschool approach for teaching children at risk to get along with others and to engage in schoolwork appropriately.
Making Meaning™: A classroom-tested K–8 reading comprehension curriculum that combines the latest comprehension research with support for students' social and ethical development.
School-Connect®: Optimizing the High School Experience: A 40-lesson curriculum designed to improve high school students' social, emotional, and academic skills and strengthen relationships among students and teachers.
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