Planning activities based on this information will ensure that emotional learning is meaningful and relevant to a child’s needs. The field of social-emotional learning (SEL) is complex encompassing a vast range of non-academic skills that are increasingly considered essential to student success but are nonetheless loosely defined. For this, it is important to ‘tune in’ to the particular, and sometimes unusual or unexpected emotional responses, emotional triggers and regulation strategies of an autistic learner. Learners with more severe communication difficulties may need a focused approach to firstly establish emotion word meanings and related concepts in real-life contexts.Īll autistic learners will benefit from a more individualised approach being taken to explore or discuss emotional events and experiences that are relevant to them. Autistic learners will benefit from visually supportive communication aids around social and emotional topics, even if they don’t require communication support in other areas of the curriculum. Emotional literacy helps your emotions work for you instead of. To be emotionally literate is to be able to handle emotions in a way that improves your personal power and the quality of your life and equally important, the quality of the life of the people around you. It is important to consider individual differences in social and emotional functioning and communication. The term emotional literacy was coined by Claude Steiner in 1979.

Born in Houston, Texas, and raised in Charleston, West Virginia, Garner studied theater. This perspective taking may be difficult for many autistic learners and care should be taken to adapt the approaches to meet the needs of the individual. Jennifer Anne Garner (born April 17, 1972) is an American actress. Many emotional literacy programmes tend to be talk-based around scenarios and stories which require empathy and the ability to understand social perspectives.

It may be necessary to plan for autistic learners to have additional opportunities to establish a positive relationship with a key adult, and to make sure that they have access to resources that offer additional communication support around the topic of emotion. One factor necessary for healthy emotional development is that children experience positive relationships with attentive, attuned and responsive adults and are given opportunities to experience and express meaningful communication about emotions.įor many autistic learners, accessing these supportive processes may be challenging due to the nature of the differences they experience relating to social interaction and communication. Emotional Literacy When planning emotional literacy and learning opportunities for autistic learners it is important to be aware of the key factors that facilitate emotional learning and promote emotional wellbeing generally.

Emotional literacy wheel