Outcome 1.2 Emotional & Social Literacy

Emotional and social literacy are the foundation for all other literacy and numeracy learnings.  

“The road to being socially competent and literate can be viewed as parallel journeys. Just as learning to read takes place slowly, develops over time, and involves mastering a specific set of skills, a child’s social competency also develops slowly and has a specific set of skills that increase through interactions with others." 
Lake, Otaiba and Guidry


Explaining this using an attachment theory perspective and the language of the Circle of Security - until you are ok on the bottom you can't move to the top!

This has been found to be true for school aged children who attend schools who are high implementers of the KidsMatter Primary framework. Research found that in NAPLAN tests children in these schools had the equivalent of 6 moths more schooling than their peers.  while is is harder to measure in early childhood anecdotally I would think this would also apply.  When children feel safe and emotionally regulated and socially connected they are able to explore their environment and engage in meaningful learning.   
(http://www.kidsmatter.edu.au/families/about-kidsmatter/kidsmatter-primary)

The aim for me would be to creating an environment and culture grounded in social and emotional wellbeing to provide children the space and capacities to express their literacy and numeracy learnings in a range of ways.  In this space children's behaviour would be seen as communication, all feelings acknowledged and valued and  different styles and ways of "doing, being and knowing" honoured.

[KidsMatter offers schools and early childhood education and care services a framework to explore the social and emotional wellbeing of the whole community and aims to reduce the stigma of mental illness. http://www.kidsmatter.edu.au/early-childhood]

Emotional literacy
Learning to understand, experience, identify and regulate a variety of different emotions is a huge part of increasing children's emotional intelligence and social competence. To be explicitly taught about all these feelings is as important for learning as learning to read and count.  In the same way a language rich environment supports literacy development an environment where all feeling are validated and discussed a deeper understanding occurs. 

Vickie E. Lake , Stephanie Al Otaiba & Lisa Guidry (2010) Developing Social

Skills Training and Literacy Instruction Pedagogy Through Service Learning: An Integrated Model of Teacher Preparation, Journal of Early Childhood Teacher Education, 31:4, 373-390,