Setting the Social and Emotional Foundation for Preschool

At the heart of my classroom is a simple idea: Children learn best when they feel they belong and their teacher likes them. A strong teacher–student connection can make a significant difference in a child’s confidence, behavior, motivation, and willingness to join in. Building relationships with our students shouldn’t just be squeezed into the first few days before the “real” teaching begins. It is the foundation that makes the teaching possible.

When starting a new school year in preschool and pre-K, building connections with our students and developing a solid social and emotional learning curriculum should be at the center of our practice.

Making authentic connections

Relationships are one of the most powerful tools a teacher has when it comes to developing a child’s social and emotional resilience. I believe children learn best through play. It is through meaningful play and playful interactions that we can get a real understanding of the children and build those deep connections.

In my classroom, we don’t jump straight into traditional lessons. “Getting to know you” worksheets can have their place in gathering information, such as a student’s favorite color or game, but building relationships requires more than this.

In my class, we spend the beginning of the school year immersed in play. And by play, I mean child-led play, not play-based activities designed by me. It is through this authentic, child-led play that I can get to know my students better. My learning assistant and I don’t just sit on the sidelines—we get on the floor and join in with the children. A child who may be quiet during whole class inputs may come alive in the block area or when they are outside immersed in role-play.

A worksheet might tell you that a student likes dinosaurs, but playing a game of dinosaurs with them and allowing them to be the expert gives them an opportunity to share something they are passionate about.

Play also allows children to practice sharing, negotiating, turn-taking, and managing disappointment in a more natural way. As teachers, we can gently support these moments, rather than stepping in immediately to solve every problem.

Developing understanding of emotions

Social and emotional learning doesn’t always need to be taught explicitly or in isolation. Small opportunities for connection can be added to routines that are already established: greeting children individually at the door, using morning circle time to explore how everyone is feeling, or starting the day with a positive affirmation song.

We also end each day with a daily question, which helps create a classroom culture that normalizes different feelings and talking about them. I join in with these daily questions and share what made me feel happy, sad, or frustrated that day. Here are some possible questions:

• What made you smile today?
• What is something that you learned today?
• Did anything go wrong today? How did that make you feel?
• How did you help a friend today?

At the beginning of the school year, we read the storybook The Color Monster, by Anna Llenas, as an introduction to discussing different emotions. Providing children with real-life examples of how I deal with different emotions gives them confidence to share what they do. We also share the language we use in class with parents, so they too can model the same at home. Throughout the day, we narrate our emotions and talk about how children might be feeling. For example, I might see a student getting frustrated in the block area and narrate their emotion: “You look frustrated because your blocks keep falling. What else could we try?”

My learning assistant and I also allow children to see us get things wrong and narrate and model how we deal with mistakes and setbacks. The children are used to hearing me say, “I got that wrong. Let me try again.” Allowing children to see adults get things wrong, and how we deal with that, can be incredibly powerful.

We often teach emotions to children without explicitly teaching them how to manage them. At the start of the school year (and throughout), teachers should help children understand that all feelings are OK, but not every behavior is OK. It can be easy for a teacher to anticipate something going wrong, or a conflict building between two children, but it is so important not to jump in and fix the issues. Instead, we need to ensure that we are allowing children to deal with conflict and big emotions, with our gentle support and encouragement.

Classroom expectations

We also go beyond the basic understanding of our emotions and explore the concept of why our behavior matters to other people. The start of the school year is a great time to learn and understand what it means to be part of a class community. We love reading the book Our Class Is a Family, by Shannon Olsen (illustrated by Sandie Sonke), which helps children understand that our classroom is a place where we are safe to be ourselves and make mistakes. We then work together to create a list of shared expectations. We explore questions such as these:

• What does kindness look like?
• What can we do when we disagree?
• How can we help someone who is struggling?
• How do we want people to feel when they are in our classroom?

I find that children, even those in preschool and pre-K, can take ownership of expectations when they fully understand that classroom rules exist to help everyone feel safe.

There can be a lot of pressure at the start of the school year to dive into explicit teaching and curriculum. However, for a classroom to run smoothly throughout the year, connection and solid relationships are vital. Social and emotional learning is not an extra to fit in around academics. It is the foundation that allows all other learning to happen.