Methods: Social Emotional Training

Social-Emotional Training as a method designed for SEN children
Social-Emotional Training or P.A.D. method (in Dutch meaning Programma Alternatieve Denkstrategieën = Programme for promoting alternative strategies of thinking) is meant to encourage and sustain emotional and social competences as well as to diminish pupils’ aggressive or challenging behaviour. It consists in identification, naming and expressing personal feelings and emotions, as it develops and improves in class, along with the teaching process. This innovative programme has been designed in order to be used by teachers and counsellors, as a universal method of caution, applicable over a period of several years.

Materials to be used

On the practical level, this method implies working with a set of plastic cards displaying various facial expressions along with the names for the corresponding emotions or feelings. The set is composed of yellow, blue and white cards. Yellow refers to positive feelings, blue stands for negative feelings, and the white colour refers to neutral feelings.
Background support:
- short stories
- situations from the pupils' personal experience
- short movies.

Practice and results

Its flexibility mainly relies on the fact that the method may be applied anytime during a lesson, depending on the circumstances.
The main principle: "Stop - pull back and think - take a deep breath - make a plan - come back and react positively!"
It leads to an improvement of protection factors and diminishes the factors of behavioural risk. Pupils become aware of the existence of feelings; they can name these feelings, discuss them, and even provide examples from personal experience.
Results:
- abilities to think, anticipate, plan
- the ability to tolerate frustration
- self-control
- abilities to solve interpersonal issues in a positive manner
- positive relationships with peers.
     
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