Explore Open Circle Resources in Playbook

For three decades, Open Circle has helped teachers, counselors, and principals in elementary schools develop students' social and emotional skills and create school communities that are safe, welcoming, and engaging for everyone. Now, teachers can explore classroom strategies from Open Circle in Playbook, Panorama's professional learning community for teachers. The Open Circle resources now available in Playbook align with Panorama's measures of social-emotional learning, including grit, growth mindset, social awareness, and self-management.

Panorama launched Playbook as a resource site to connect teachers with actionable classroom strategies that have worked for other teachers, as well as the research behind critical aspects of classroom practice, such as belonging and engagement. Playbook provides actionable strategies aligned with student feedback survey topics and social-emotional learning survey topics. 

When teachers first sign into Playbook, they answer a few questions about the grade and subject they teach, and how long they've been teaching. Playbook uses this information to personalize the moves they see in Playbook to their teaching context and experience.

The new moves from Open Circle expands Playbook's power to present personalized strategies for teachers of elementary students. Teachers looking for ways to support their students' social and emotional growth will find targeted moves written by Open Circle that have been honed in training sessions and through the classroom practice of thousands of teachers in contexts similar to their own.

Strategies for Social-Emotional Learning 

Since Playbook debuted, we have heard from principals, counselors, and teachers asking for more opportunities to use social-emotional learning strategies that have been developed and vetted by trusted organizations like Open Circle.

Open Circle's resources in Playbook target six key SEL domains for elementary-aged students:

• Grit
• Growth Mindset
• Social Awareness
• Self-Efficacy
• Self-Management
• Sense of Belonging

Social-emotional learning isn't new for many of the teachers who use Playbook. Teachers have been attentive to students' social awareness and building their self-efficacy for years. But with a growing focus on social-emotional learning in many schools and districts, teachers are looking for new and fresh ideas for social-emotional learning -- on developing self-management skills or encouraging their students to have a growth mindset. Now, teachers can find even more of these trusted, actionable social-emotional learning strategies.

Listening Practice: An Open Circle Move on Playbook

One Open Circle move on Playbook aims to help students understand the traits of someone who listens well and to have the opportunity to practice listening and speaking skills. It's called "Listening Practice."

The move provides a step-by-step guide for teachers to facilitate a full-class conversation exercise. During the exercise, all students have the chance to discuss the body language, voice control, and attention that go into being a good listener and a good speaker. And each student has the chance to to practice good listening and speaking skills.

Ask students:

• What do you have to do to listen well? How will your body look? Where will you be looking? (Your body is calm; You look at the person who is speaking.)

• What do you have to do in order for other people to hear you when you talk? (Speak loudly enough; look at the group.)

In the "Why This Works" section of the move, Open Circle explains, "Listening well is an important building block to awareness of other’s perspectives and empathizing with others." If your school already uses Open Circle, Playbook now reinforces Open Circle practices. For everyone else, these materials provide actionable strategies vetted by a trusted social and emotional learning program.

At Panorama, we are excited to hear from teachers about how they are using social-emotional learning strategies from Open Circle. Find us on Twitter @PanoramaEd to let us know how you're using Open Circle moves with your class!