“My shyest girl brought in a huge collection of poetry she had written after school, proudly performing her work with more energy and expression that I could ever teach to a class that overwhelmed her with praise and acceptance. My boy with a writing IEP who had been afraid to scribe even a sentence in the beginning of the year projected his four- paragraph essay for his peers to critique, and not one student mentioned the spelling errors in nearly every word. Perhaps most inspiring, my students transitioned flawlessly from English to Spanish and back again in an hourlong Socratic Seminar that invited even my monolingual students to feel the sense of accomplishment and pride. For an hour I sat silently, admiring my students, their knowledge, and their growth, and it overwhelmed me with awe. This is what literacy should be. It’s what all kids deserve.”
—Mike Taglienti, Fort Logan Northgate School, Denver, Colorado
Students’ social and emotional wellbeing is intimately connected to their academic success. Like all humans, students have certain social and emotional needs that must be met for them to succeed at school. They need to feel a sense of belonging in the school community, a sense of competence or significance within it, and a measure of autonomy or control over their learning.1 Research has demonstrated that students succeed when these needs are met and struggle when they are not.2 Whether students succeed at school depends on their development of key social-emotional skills, such as how to communicate effectively with others, how to organize and manage tasks, and how to recover from setbacks or failure.3 Schools must accordingly foster students’ social-emotional development in seamless integration with academic learning.4
Wit & Wisdom®, a K–8 English language arts curriculum, does just that. Wit & Wisdom was designed with the research-based understanding that social, emotional, and academic learning are interconnected multidirectionally: Not only do students perform better academically when their social and emotional needs are met, but engaging in academic learning with joyful rigor in a supportive, safe classroom environment helps them feel competent, significant, and successful.5
Wit & Wisdom fosters development of the five social-emotional competencies identified by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning:
Moreover, at each grade level, the curricula is designed to cultivate a community of readers and writers. A brief opening unit—Module Zero—guides teachers to carefully introduce the curriculum, establish basic routines students will use all year, and foster students’ connections to each other and their learning. Students begin to feel safe enough to take the academic risks needed to learn. Each of the remaining four modules is organized around a compelling topic. All students read, discuss, and write about the same texts aligned with that topic; in the process, they develop a sense of community that deepens through a shared purpose and pursuit of knowledge.
The curriculum is also designed to expand students’ social-emotional development from grade to grade. The collaborative structures and learning frameworks in Wit & Wisdom evolve in age-appropriate complexity across the K–8 span.
Research has demonstrated the powerful and lasting effects of integrating social, emotional, and academic learning.7 Indeed, such integration is a key reason for Great Minds ELA curricula's success. Students thrive because they have the social and emotional support and the skills needed for rigorous academic learning. Further, strong social, emotional, and academic competence prepares students to succeed outside school and in the future.
The following sections of this document describe Wit & Wisdom’s integration of social-emotional learning (SEL):
Self-Awareness
Students learn to accurately recognize their emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior and to accurately assess their strengths and limitations, with a well-grounded sense of confidence, optimism, and a “growth mindset” by
Self-Management
Students work on successfully regulating their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors
in different situations—effectively managing stress, controlling impulses, and motivating themselves, as well as setting and working toward personal and academic goals, by
Social Awareness
Students learn to take the perspective
of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds and cultures; to understand social and ethical norms for behavior; and to recognize family, school, and community resources and supports by
Relationship Skills
Students learn to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding relationships with diverse individuals and groups; communicate clearly, listen well, cooperate with others, resist inappropriate social pressure, negotiate conflict constructively, and seek and offer help when needed through
Responsible Decision-Making
Students learn to make constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions based on ethical standards, safety concerns, and social norms; to realistically evaluate the consequences of various actions; and to consider their well-being and that of others by
Family and Community Partnerships
Wit & Wisdom helps strengthen these partnerships by offering
School-wide Practices and Policies
Wit & Wisdom supports SEL development at the whole school level through its