Using Children’s Books to Support Social and Emotional Learning
Books can be an incredible tool to teach a kid about certain situations. When children listen to an exciting story along with a positive lesson in the end, it can prove to be more useful than just trying to give the explanation of the lesson to them. Stories are a wonderful way to communicate with young students, and hence, it’s vital to select the perfect book for every scenario.
Read Through the Book Yourself First
If you fail to read through a book prior to reading it to the class, you may identify that it doesn’t suit the lesson as well as per your thinking, or it can even make the students bored. Even if you’ve read the book in the past, it’s wise to reread it before you use it in a new lesson. The reason is that you want to ensure the book is contemporary and will be applicable to your present students as much as it was to the past students.
Ensure the Message Is Easy To Understand and Clear
You should select every book for a particular situation or lesson for the class or the kid you’re reading to. If you feel that the message of the book may not be adequately clear for the children after you read through it, you should continue searching for another book. You want books that’ll leave children with something to learn from and think about. Therefore, if a book doesn’t have that element, it’s nothing but a cool story for the children.
Ensure It’ll Be Appealing to All the Children
If you’re reading a book to a whole class of students and just a few of them actually enjoying it, perhaps it isn’t the best choice. Ensure you only choose books that’ll appeal to all or most of your students and benefit them. Moreover, when it comes to reading, interests vary from one age group to another, so ensure you select a book that’s perfect for the particular age group you’re teaching.
Ensure It’s Enjoyable to Read
Even if a children’s book contains a good message, it might not be enjoyable to read. You want to select a book that’ll be able to keep every child interested throughout the story. Search for books that have limited words on each page and interesting pictures. In case the book isn’t interesting enough, children may quickly become uninterested and fail to retain the story’s message at all.
Summing Up
You cannot just choose the first children’s book with a useful message that you find, as you must ensure it’s appropriate for the child’s grade level and interesting. An extensive selection of children’s books with good lessons and positive messages is available for learning. So, when choosing a book to teach children about social or emotional situations efficiently, you must take your time to choose one that’ll work most effectively for the given subject. With a huge number of children’s books available in the market, you shouldn’t have much difficulty finding the one that’ll perfectly cater to your needs.