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5 Read Alouds and STEM Challenges to Teach Relationship Skills to Kids

Social and emotional learning (SEL) has always been important, but we are at a critical turning point of understanding just how important these skills are for our learners.

The elementary STEM classroom is a great place to begin teaching students the foundational relationship skills needed to be successful in all other areas of their lives. Relationship skills allow your students the opportunity to put other SEL skills like self-awareness (how they feel) and social awareness (how others feel) into action (collaboration).

What is Social Emotional Learning?

Our SEL STEM challenges follow CASEL’s Social Emotional Learning Framework and include 5 core competencies, one of which is relationship skills. Students who are taught relationship skills are able to communicate clearly, listen actively, cooperate, work collaboratively to problem solve and negotiate conflict constructively, navigate settings with differing social and cultural demands, provide leadership, and seek or offer help when needed.

Relationship Skills like:

Communicating effectively
Developing positive relationships
Demonstrating cultural competency
Practicing teamwork and collaborative problem-solving
Resolving conflicts constructively
Resisting negative social pressure
Showing leadership in groups
Seeking or offering support and help when needed
Standing up for the rights of others

Relationship Skills for Kids

Relationship skills are important for our students because they are often asked to work in small groups, sometimes even larger groups, within the classroom and outside of the school walls. It’s easy to take for granted that the students may or may not already know how to work together in these situations.

Teaching relationship skills to the students in your classroom will allow them to explore questions like these:

What does it look like to work within a group?
What is my role within the group?
What happens if my group fails?
What happens if my group is successful?
How do I agree with my classmates?
How do I disagree with my classmates and still remain respectful?

Read Alouds and STEM Challenges to Teach Relationship Skills to Kids

Integrating SEL in our classrooms doesn’t have to be another thing that we add to our already packed schedules. SEL skills and strategies can be incorporated into the content we are already teaching. There are many connections between the goals of meaningful STEM learning and the tenets of social emotional development.

We’ve put together a SEL STEM bundle with 5 of our favorite read alouds and STEM challenges to help teach students about the importance of relationship skills. These challenges will give your students the opportunity to communicate with others, collaborate, and problem solve.

1. Coding to Kindness

Coding to Kindness by Valerie Sousa is about three friends who sometimes get into disagreements. As they navigate these sticky situations, this interactive picture book allows friends to use coding to find solutions.

In Coding to Kindness, the characters use the directions and sequence of their code to listen to each other, share with one another, and solve problems. Just like friendships, coding takes multiple steps before the code. Each step we take towards being kind to others helps to build our friendship with them.

In this SEL STEM activity, students make a model swing for friends to play on. Students discover how to navigate relationships through a mindful moments strategy, coding activity, and writing prompt.