Qian Zhang

FS19-TE-808-703 Inquiry Into Classroom Teaching

Inquiry into Social-Emotional Competence for Kindergartners :

How Social Skills Training Affect Students

Qian Zhang

Michigan State University

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Research Question
Context

I work for Post Oak Academy as a Chinese immersion teacher in Lansing,

Michigan. It is an elementary school to offer the International Baccalaureate
Primary Years Program and Chinese Immersion Program to students. This is my
third year working there and my first year teaching Kindergarten. I taught fourth,
fifth and sixth grade for the past two years. Students spend 50% of their school day
in English classroom and 50% in Chinese classroom, learning English, Chinese,
Math, Social Studies, and Science.

I have two classes with 31 students in total. There are 20 girls and 11 boys. Their
ethnicity distribution is described in the pie chart below (see ​figure 1)​ . Three
students are English Language Learners. Two students are in the school plan of
Special Education. They will work with Literacy Specialists weekly. One student
was diagnosed with ADHD/ADD, who also has PTSD and disinhibited social
anxiety disorder. About 34% of students attended Pre-Kindergarten at Post Oak.
About 9% of students are repeating Kindergarten because of failing to meet grade
level requirements. Most of them are from low socio-economic families.

Figure 1

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Challenge

Working with younger kids this year, one of my biggest challenges is to teach them
social skills. We have been learning and talking about rules, routines and
procedures for the first several weeks. Most of the students know what to do, but
some kids choose not to do it. Sometimes, I share my confusion with my teaching
partner: “The kid can tell me what he is supposed to be doing, so why isn’t he
doing it?”. One of the students who repeated Kindergarten had difficulty
expressing his emotions. He would hit the student who tried to give him a hug
because he didn’t know how to say “no” to others in an appropriate way. He was
rejected by most of the classmates. These behaviors all show a lack of social skills.

According to the requirement of our Chinese immersion program, we are expected

to use 100% Chinese in the classroom. With these challenging behaviors, it’s hard
to teach students expectations at the beginning without the support of English
instructions. Students couldn’t fully understand how the classroom works and how
to interact with peers with demonstration and instruction in Chinese. This also
caused multiple challenging behaviors at the beginning. It makes me think of what
social skills training I can offer to students to help them survive the first
community in their lives using the target language.

Justification

With many young children getting into a classroom setting the first time, they need
to develop and adapt their social skills through their interactions with their teacher
and their classmates. Some of them might never learn appropriate behavior for
social purposes because of the lack of parental guidance at home. Some might do
well at home, but don’t know how to interact with other adults and children. Social
competence is highly linked to peer acceptance and teacher acceptance. Lack of
social skills interfere with learning, teaching, and the classroom climate, which
leads to slow academic progress. Social skills, such as communication,
problem-solving, decision making, self-management, and building positive peer
relations abilities, help students succeed in the classroom as well as in a bigger
community.

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After working with these kindergarteners for weeks, I think teaching them
communication skills and emotional knowledge can make a big difference. Their
communication was broadened to a large group of peers and adults that is new to
them. Some were afraid to speak in front of people. Some couldn’t tell the teacher
that they were bothered by others, so they would cry a lot. They don’t know how to
ask for help and fail to say “Stop, I don’t like it” in an appropriate way. Some kids
cannot tell the difference of missing mom and not feeling well. Therefore, I think
it’s important to teach them how to be a communicator and share their feelings
with adults correctly. Before this research project started, one of my kindergartners
dropped out of school because of the miss of communication between the student
and the teacher. During lunch recess, one student played roughly with the other
student. He didn’t tell the recess teachers or classroom teachers that he got hurt,
and told his parents after school. The parent got mad and was concerned with
school safety. If the student was able to share with teachers, we could take actions
to work on this incident and inform parents instead of being told from a parent.
Working with these youngsters, it’s necessary to build communication skills first.

Research Questions

Social development influences academic success and classroom positive climate,

as well as personal success. This makes me focus on my main research question,
which is “If I teach communication skills and emotional knowledge, how will it
affect the students in my class?”. Communication skills include working as a
team, using magic words (thank you, sorry, please, excuse me), how to start
conversations, how to ask for permission, etc. Emotional knowledge focuses on
how to express feelings properly, how to deal with frustration, etc. Poor social
competence affects students’ learning, because they would have difficulty
listening, working as a group, etc. When planning this topic for my research
project, I would ask myself how I can help them improve, or in what ways I can
assess students’ social competence development. I had a new student enrolled in
kindergarten last month, who demonstrated poor ability to interact with adults and
follow directions. He had difficulty staying seated. It’s hard for him to concentrate
and listen to what I say. He showed a high risk of failing to meet the benchmark
when I tested him with an early number and literacy assessment. It made me think

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about what kinds of social-emotional competence I should implement in the
classroom for kindergarten groups. This leads to my other research questions:
“What social skills training I can offer to students to improve social competence?”,
and “Will observational assessment provide validity data for my research?”

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Literature Review
My literature review explored the importance of teaching social-emotional
competence to young children. My inquiry explores the connection between
social-emotional competence of young children and their academic success. I
searched for evidence of how social-emotional competences connect with
academic success. And I wanted to learn more about what social-emotional
competences can be adapted to my current teaching, in what ways they are
connected to student achievement, and what activities or training I can implement
in my classroom.

I focused on searching for studies about early childhood. There is various research
talking about the link between social-emotional competence and academic
achievement. The development of social-emotional competence is an important
foundation for young children’s later success and well-being (Ashdown, Bernard
2011). Bernard found that children considered to be “at-risk” for academic
difficulties displayed significantly lower levels of competence in the areas of
confidence, persistence and organization. Competence in managing feelings and
social relationships contributes to success in the classroom, at home, and in life in
general. Many educators would agree that learning both emotional and social skills
is an essential part of early childhood development (Schultz, Richardson, Barber,
Wilcox, 2011). Social and emotional competencies are important for successful
adjustment. Without explicit instruction and coaching in these social and emotional
skills, students may not be able to manage their feelings and behaviors successfully
(Schultz, Richardson, Barber, Wilcox, 2011). Young children who lack social and
emotional competence frequently demonstrate discipline problems in school and
are at risk for not achieving future academic success (McClelland 2006).

These all addressed the importance of teaching social-emotional competence to

young children. Students with poor social-emotional competence have difficulty
following directions, working together with peers, and staying on task, which
affect their learning. All these studies talked about different social-emotional
competences. Rhoades, Warren, Domitrovich and Greenberg’s research examines
how emotion knowledge and attention skills interact to influence early academic

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achievement. Understanding emotions is among the first social-emotional skills to
emerge during early childhood. And attention skills, which include the ability to
maintain or sustain attention on a particular subject and the ability to shift attention
from one subject to another, are also essential to academic achievement. They
brought up two hypotheses. One is that there will be a positive association between
preschool emotion knowledge and kindergarten attention skills as well as a positive
association between kindergarten attention skills and first grade academic
competence. The other hypothesis is that the association between preschool
emotion knowledge and first grade academic competence will be mediated by
kindergarten attention skills (Rhoades, Warren, Domitrovich and Greenberg,
2010). They conducted their study in a public preschool program in an urban
school district across three years. They used methods of child assessments,
interviews to collect data and compare them across grades. Based on the
comparison of the data, it can tell preschool emotion knowledge and attention
skills are significant to academic achievement which supports the importance of
social-emotional skills in achieving academic success.

According to Schultz, Richardson, Barber and Wilcox, social-emotional learning in

early childhood sets the stage for students’ future behaviors in schools. Teaching
children how to effectively express emotions and engage in positive relationships
before and during early childhood education may decrease their risk for developing
academic, behavioral, and mental health problems. One method of interrupting
problematic behavior in early childhood is to teach social and emotional skills
explicitly.

Also, Ashdown and Bernard studied about the benefit of explicit instruction in
social and emotional learning skills to young children’s academic achievement.
They investigated the effect of a social and emotional learning skills curriculum,
the ​You Can Do It! Early Childhood Education Program​ (YCDI), on the
social-emotional development, well-being and academic achievement of young
students. The students in the study who received YCDI, delivered by their teachers
as part of the curriculum, displayed signicantly greater gains in their teacher-rated
levels of social-emotional competence and social skills than the students who did
not receive the program. And the social-emotional competence was measured in

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terms of items associated with positive self-orientation, positive other-orientation,
and positive work-orientation while social skills were measured in terms of items
associated with cooperation, assertion, and self-control.

In both Ashdown and Schultz’s researches, they mentioned CASEL, which stands
for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, suggests five
core social and emotional competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social
awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (CASEL 2005).
Other key social-emotional skills that young children need as they enter school,
include self-condence, the capacity to develop positive relationships with peers
and adults, concentration and persistence on challenging tasks, an ability to
effectively communicate emotions, an ability to listen to instructions and be
attentive, and skills in solving social problems (Shonkoff and Philips 2000).

McClelland, Acock and Morrison brought up learning-related skills to describe a

set of skills that are important for children to succeed academically, including
self-regulation and social competence. They are specific behavior-related, such as
self-control, staying on task, organizing work materials, working independently,
listening and following directions, etc. Children entering kindergarten without
these skills are at a significantly greater risk for difficulties including peer rejection
and low levels of academic achievement (McClelland, Acock, Morrison, 2006).
When I read about these skills, they are the skills I taught to kindergartners during
the first several weeks of school and reinforced through the whole school year.

Different researchers focus on different social skills in their studies. I would work
specifically on implementing emotional knowledge and communication skills in
my classroom. I decided on emotional knowledge teaching because I noticed that
there are multiple students who have difficulty expressing their emotions. One
student repeated kindergarten for poor social competence especially on emotional
knowledge. Another student would throw stuff and make the angry face but fail to
express her needs/emotions to others. We have activities in the classroom that need
group work. Teaching them to share materials, take turns is an important part of
cooperation.

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9
Design and Method
Participants

I teach two classes of kindergartners with 31 students in total. There are 20 girls
and 11 boys. Three students are English Language Learners. Two students are in
the school plan of Special Education. They will work with Literacy Specialists
weekly. One student was diagnosed with ADHD/ADD, who also has PTSD and
disinhibited social anxiety disorder. About 34% of students attended
Pre-Kindergarten at Post Oak. About 9% of students are repeating Kindergarten
because of failing to meet academic requirements as well as slow social
development. For example, one of them had difficulty expressing his emotions. He
would hit the student who tried to give him a hug because he didn’t know how to
say “no” to others in an appropriate way.

I will focus on the whole group of students. Because the training I prepare will
serve for all the students who are new to school settings. There are a lot of social
skills that students are in need of to make them succeed at school. I will mainly
include emotional knowledge and communication skills in this action plan. It is
important to teach students how to express their emotions correctly, such as
handling frustration and anger, positively interacting with peers through asking for
permission and sharing, etc. What makes communication skills important is that it
helps students solve conflicts, sharing and working as a team, etc.

Data

Because my research targets are kindergartners, I plan to collect the data mainly
through observation. I will observe how students interact with each other before
and after a social skill training is offered. I will keep an observation journal to
record how the behavior changed over training.

I will use a checklist to observe students during an activity (see ​Appendix

A-observation checklist)​ . I also used audiotapes to record what happens in the
classroom to allow me to observe certain behaviors from the perspective of a
privileged, active observer. To help me reflect on which social skills training works

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well, I would use attitude scales to know about how students feel about the social
skills training.

​Timeline

Time Topic Focus

Week 1 “Magic words” ● Saying please and thank you
● Apologizing
● Interrupting others appropriately
Week 2 Be a communicator ● Starting a conversation with
others
● Joining a group activity already
in progress
● Asking for permission
● Understanding the feelings of
others
● Resolving conflicts with others
Week 3 Teamwork
● Sharing materials
● Waiting his/her turn
● Working as a team
● Complimenting others’ work
● Accepting praise from others

Week 4 Manage my emotions

● Accepting "No" for an answer
● Accepting the consequences
given by the teacher
● Dealing with frustration/making a
mistake

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Role and Ethics Issues

Except for recording information immediately in the classroom, I would also try to
observe students during their special lessons (Library, music, art and PE), which I
don’t need to teach. And it also helps me to observe how students behave under
different learning circumstances. I think during recess is a good time to observe
how students interact with each other. Students were upset when they didn't have
someone to play with. It will help me to observe “joining a group activity already
in progress” and “accepting no for an answer” in the checklist. Students show who
they are, how they interact with others more naturally than in the classroom setting.

My school sends out letters at the beginning of the school year to ask for the
permission of picture-taking and recording. I have a record of who are allowed and
who are not. I will mainly use observation for students who are not permitted to
take audiotapes. Students will be anonymous during the observation and data
collection process. Data will not be shared with others except for this research
purpose.

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Data Analysis
Procedures

My research question is if I teach communication skills and emotional knowledge,

how will it affect the students in my class? To better help students succeed in
school, I have been thinking about “What social skills training I can offer to
students to improve social competence?”. And I decided I would teach social skills
through four themes, which are “Magic Words”, “Be a Communicator”,
“Teamwork”, and “Manage My Emotions”. Each theme has a focus on social skills
that were displayed in the table of timeline section above. During the four weeks of
data collection, I focused on one theme per week.

Week 1: Magic Words

I combined this week’s theme with my school’s IB planner. My school offers the
International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program, which provides schools with a
curriculum framework of six transdisciplinary themes. I connected magic words
with the first planner: How We Organize Ourselves. In this planner, students were
learning about decisions that impact others. We discussed good choices and bad
choices we made at school. Part of the planner requires students to develop a
respect for self and others. I thought it would be a good way to introduce good
manners as a good choice we can make at school.

The teaching objectives for this week were for students to learn how to say “thank
you”, “sorry”, “please”, “excuse me” in Chinese and identify in which situation
they should use each magic word. I used four situations as a hook. Each situation
was a picture of how students interact with each other that miss one of the magic
words. Students did think-pair-share to describe what happened in each situation
and what word the boy/girl in these pictures should say to others. I also read aloud
a theme-related Chinese story “Sorry, snowman” to students. We set a goal of
using these magic words. Every time a student used the magic word, we would put
a sticker on the magic words poster. I mainly observed the interaction between me
and students and among students themselves. Every student was passionate about

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using these words. The first week we had a lot of stickers on the poster. As a
summative assessment of this theme, every student picked one of the magic words
and created a picture to show when the word could be used. I attached some of the
students' work in the appendix (see ​Appendix B - Student Works of “Magic
Words”​).

Week 2: Be a Communicator

Communication is also an important component of this IB planner. Students are

expected to develop listening skills, self-management skills, and begin to resolve
conflicts with others. Under this theme, we focused on how to start a conversation
with others, join a group activity already in progress, ask for permission from both
peers and teachers, and how to resolve conflicts with others. I collected examples
of how students react to fail to join a conversation or a group. For example, some
students would tell me that no one plays with him/her, someone wouldn’t let
him/her get on the swing. Students in most of these cases didn’t even try to ask
first. They just got upset when they were not a part of something and came to ask
for help from adults. Then, I used these cases as examples in the classroom to let
students brainstorm ways to solve the situation.

Conflicts happen when kindergarteners fight for a certain thing, like a preferred
marker, a learning tool, or they fight for who gets first, or they cannot stop others
from doing something that bothers them, etc. I would start a small group
conference with students who are involved and work out a way to solve the
problem by asking questions. We would also learn sentences that solve the minor
conflicts, such as “Can you please stop?”, “Can I please have my spot back?”. I
would also post these sentences in the classroom to provide a visual reminder and
support to students. Then, I would observe how they handle the same situation
afterwards.

I recorded the number of tattling conflicts as the data to see the change over time,
and used my ClassDojo report to obtain the data of failing to ask for permission
from teachers.

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Week 3: Teamwork

I started the social skill of working as a team as a supportive strategy of building

Math stations in my classroom. I work with one group doing Guided Math while
the rest groups work as a group on their own. It makes the skill of working as a
team so important when I build math stations. The main aspects include sharing
materials, waiting his/her turn, complimenting others’ work and accepting praise
from others. I did modeling, videos to show how teamwork looks like and used
teamwork activities (See ​Appendix C -​ ​An Activity of Teamwork​).

My teaching partner also shared with me a team activity the students did in her
classroom and how it worked out. Students were learning to describe how sunlight
affects the Earth’s surface and to build something to protect the ground from the
hot sun. Two or three students worked in a group. They needed to work together to
build something using blocks to protect a toy bear from being exposed to the sun.
However, each student had limited blocks that were not enough to build the
surrounding. They had to share their blocks, so they had enough to build it. Sixteen
students participated in this activity. Only two students succeeded in building by
sharing their blocks and working together. One student figured out to build
something only using his own blocks. The rest of the students were whining, or
complaining to teachers, or gave up.

I mainly monitored this social skill through the observation of their interaction
when students did group work and the number of tattling I received during group
work time.

Week 4: Manage my emotions

Moving into kindergarten is a big step for students. They cannot handle their
emotions well. They would cry for mom in the middle of a day. They cry for
something they didn’t have. They cry when the teacher says “no”. They get
frustrated when they cannot find the right page of a math book, or when they can't
button their coat. Some students would ask for help, and some would stay

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frustrated. I mainly observed the certain students who have poor self-management
skills, and recorded how he/she grew through the observational journal.

Findings

The results of my research are mainly obtained through observation. The frequency
of using magic words was highly increased in the first week, and kept high for a
couple of weeks. Students can not only use these words, but also remind others to
use them. We got 108 stickers for the first week of using magic words, and 98
stickers for the second week. Students were motivated by getting stickers and using
new Chinese words. They seized every chance to use these words. The chart below
demonstrates the frequency of using these magic words during these four weeks. I
also attached an example of how the poster looks like in the appendix (see
Appendix D - Stickers for the Magic Words)​ .

The number of recorded conflicts or arguments between students didn’t vary a lot
after I did the training in the classroom, but the way how students handle with the
help of teachers improved. There is an increase during week three from November
11th to 15th when we started to work on teamwork. Students had more
independent interaction among each other without the teacher's guide. However,
the number of tattling between students remained high the whole time.

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 Week 1 Week 2 Week 3
(11/04 - 11/08) (11/11 - 11/15) (11/18 - 11/22)
Number of conflicts 4 7 5
or arguments
Number of tattling 23 35 26

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Conclusions and Discussion
Summary

My research question is “if I teach communication skills and emotional knowledge,

how will it affect the students in my class?”. When we started the school year,
some of the kindergartners were new to a school setting. They didn’t know how to
sit on the rug to listen. There was one girl who just stood up and wandered around
in the classroom in the middle of learning. It took a while to teach her how to listen
to directions. And she chose not to communicate with anyone who was not familiar
to her at that time. She even stayed quiet during all the beginning tests. She was
“isolated” from the rest of class. She was one of the many youngsters who never
learned "appropriate behavior" for social settings in which they must interact with
others.

Previously, I would classify some students’ misbehaviors as being naughty or

“bad”. This research helped me to explore the factors that affect their behaviors.
After conducting this research and observing closely on students’ interaction, I
understood the necessity of including social skills into our planners.

Connections

I searched for the connection between social-emotional competence and academic

achievement to prove that social-emotional competence plays an important role in
students’ learning. Bernard (2011) found that children considered to be “at-risk”
for academic difficulties displayed significantly lower levels of competence in the
areas of confidence, persistence and organization. Competence in managing
feelings and social relationships contributes to success in the classroom, at home,
and in life in general. I agreed with him when observing students in the classroom.
I compared students’ early number assessment with how they behave in the
classroom. Students in Tier 3, which means at high risk of failing grade level
requirements, have difficulty focusing in the classroom. It fitted with Rhoades,
Warren, Domitrovich and Greenberg’s research (2010) of how attention skills
influence early academic achievement. Attention skills, which include the ability to

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maintain or sustain attention on a particular subject and the ability to shift attention
from one subject to another, are also essential to academic achievement.

Shonkoff and Philips (2000) talked about the key social-emotional skills that
young children need as they enter school, include self-condence, the capacity to
develop positive relationships with peers and adults, concentration and persistence
on challenging tasks, an ability to effectively communicate emotions, an ability to
listen to instructions and be attentive, and skills in solving social problems.
McClelland, Acock and Morrison (2006) also thought children entering
kindergarten without these skills are at a significantly greater risk for difficulties
including peer rejection and low levels of academic achievement. During my
observation, the student who had difficulty sharing materials and waiting for
his/her turn was often rejected by others if they were grouped. One girl has a very
hard time being accepted by others. Everyone tried to help her by telling her what
she should do in a nice way. She would get angry and throw herself on the floor.
And she got more mad if other kids were looking at her at this time. I’m frustrated
that the training didn’t help her improve a lot, but it definitely showed how
important it is to equip students with these social-emotional competence to help
them fit into a learning community.

Implications

This is my first year teaching kindergarten, which is the youngest age I have ever
taught. It challenged me at the beginning to work with these youngsters who have
little social skills. And I couldn’t connect the difficulty of interacting with teachers
and peers with their lack of social skills. I worked a lot on giving explicit
instructions, and reinforcing procedures. The study also helped me realize how
important the social-emotional competence is. Such as the attention skill, it’s really
hard to learn if you are not comfortable paying attention and taking turns in a
classroom setting. Kindergarteners are not only studying letters and numbers now,
but they are also developing social and emotional skills—skills like making
friends, sharing toys, and listening to the teacher—that they will need to succeed in
school and in life.

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For a long time, I think academics are more important than social emotional
learning because of the school's culture and learning environment I grew up in. It’s
great to see it is changing now. With increased concern about bullying, suicide, and
school violence, administrators and teachers are paying more attention to the
importance of social emotional learning. It builds the foundation of students’
mental health and resilience. For my future teaching, I want to include more social
emotional learning into my teaching. I would like to keep working on one social
skill every week. I will incorporate more activities with my curriculum that work
on cooperation, communication and attention span.

Further Study

When conducting this action plan, I could tell students were making progress on
learning these social skills. They knew how to be a communicator. We built a
procedure of how to solve conflicts using nice words. Students can follow the
teacher’s guide or hint, but they cannot solve any conflicts independently. There
were multiple times that one student would insist on telling the teacher the other
accidentally hit her without hearing the other’s apology.

It drew my attention to the growing number of tattling in the classroom. It came so

naturally from some students, such as “she is using the marker (which is not
allowed at that time)”, “He didn’t raise his hand for the bathroom”, etc. It
happened every minute. And students cannot tell it’s different from reminding
others to make right choices.

My question about the further study of youngsters’ social-emotional competence is

in what ways I can teach students to take the initiative to talk with the student who
made a bad choice first instead of telling teachers? Even the students who show
mature and good behaviors would also tattle other students. Why would students
consider tattling is making a good choice by correcting others’ misbehaviors? I
would like to search more information about tattling and whow I can reduce it.

Reflection

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Social behavior associated with learning, teaching, and the classroom's climate.
Social competence is linked to peer acceptance, teacher acceptance, success at
school and at home. Displaying poor social skills is likely to get one rejected by
others. It changed my attitude of viewing students’ behaviors, conflicts and
adjusted my teaching from focusing on content learning to combining social
growth.

My research gave me the chance to consider classroom behaviors from a different

perspective. I focus on not only why students demonstrate this kind of behavior but
also how I can help them improve. One student would copy what others do, even
the bad choices, to gain attention because she saw others have the attention from
adults. After knowing about her family and talking with the parent, I understood
that she wanted the attention. She thought she’s losing the attention of parents
because of a coming baby. It reminded me to know more about my students not
just in the classroom. Spending time to talk with students can build our relationship
and help me know better about each of them.

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References​:
Ashdown, D. M. & Bernard, M. E. (2012). Can explicit instruction in social and
emotional learning skills benefit the social-emotional development, well-being, and
academic achievement of young children? Early Childhood Education Journal,
39:397-405

Aram, D. & Shlak, M. (2008). The Safe Kindergarten: Promotion of

Communication and Social Skills Among Kindergartners. Early Education and
Development, 19:865-884

Falk, B., & Blumenreich, M. (2005). ​The power of questions: A guide to teacher
and student research​. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Lopes, Paulo N. & Salovey, P. (2004). Toward a broader education: social,

emotional and practical skills. Building school success on social and emotional
learning.

McClelland, M. (2006). The impact of kindergarten learning-related skills on

academic trajectories at the end of elementary school. Early Childhood Research
Quarterly, 21, 471–490.

McClelland, M.M., Morrison, F.J., & Holmes, D. H. (2000). Children at-risk for
early academic problems: The role of learning-related social skills. Early
Childhood Research Quarterly, 15, 307–329

Rhoades, B. L., Warren, H. K., Domitrovich, C. E. & Greenberg, M. T. (2010).

Examining the link between preschool social-emotional competence and first grade
academic achievement: The role of attention skills. Early Childhood Research
Quarterly, 26, 182–191.

Schultz, B. L., Richardson, R.C., Barber, C.R. & Wilcox, D. (2011). A preschool
pilot study of connecting with others: lessons for teaching social and emotional
competence. Early Childhood Education Journal 39:143-148.

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Shonkoff, J. P., & Philips, D. A. (Eds.). (2000). From neurons to neighborhoods:
The science of early child-hood development. Washington, DC: National Academy
Press.

Webster-Stratton, C., & Reid, M. J. (2004). Strengthening social and emotional

competence in young children: The foundation for early school readiness and
success. Infants and Young Children, 17, 96–113.

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Appendix A

Observation Checklist

❏ Saying please and thank you

❏ Apologizing
❏ Interrupting others appropriately
❏ Accepting "No" for an answer
❏ Accepting the consequences given by the teacher
❏ Understanding the feelings of others
❏ Starting a conversation with others
❏ Joining a group activity already in progress
❏ Asking for permission
❏ Sharing materials
❏ Waiting his/her turn
❏ Complimenting others’ work
❏ Accepting praise from others
❏ Working as a team

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Appendix B
Student Works of “Magic Words”
Kindergarteners cannot write. I recorded what they described their work.

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(My brother gave me a doll and I said “thank you”)

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(My friend Layla gave me a small piece of chocolate and I said “thank you”)

(I bumped into Melody and I said “sorry”)

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Appendix C
An activity of teamwork

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Appendix D
Stickers for the Magic Words

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