Integrating Music Into Social and Emotional Learning

Music classes can serve as a way to help students develop social-emotional learning skills, and activities that build these tools can be introduced into classrooms as early as preschool, according to an Edutopia article by Laura Petillo, early childhood advocate and music educator at the Basie Center for the Arts, and Dr. Kerry Carley Rizzuto, associate professor of early childhood education at Monmouth University.

Art classes and programming can act as a natural vehicle to seed social-emotional learning opportunities into classrooms. In this way, educators can better support students’ emotional growth across the K-12 curriculum.

Visual and performing arts programs can specifically help students develop SEL skills, from impulse control to delayed gratification. Arts classes can also help to strengthen community among students by encouraging them to cooperate, communicate and also support each other, notes the National Association for Music Education.

Additionally, art can serve as a method for helping students learn to manage their own stress, which may be helpful when school returns this fall after the impacts of COVID-19 over the past year. Students can use art to channel their feelings, thoughts or worries, strengthening one of the core tenets of SEL competencies, self-management.

Excerpted from “Integrating Music Into Social and Emotional Learning” in K-12 DIVE. Read the full article online.

Read Integrating Music Into Social and Emotional Learning in Edutopia for specific musical passages and activities you can use to help preschoolers to identify and manage their emotions.

Source: K-12 DIVE | Integrating Music Into Social and Emotional Learning, https://www.k12dive.com/news/arts-provide-a-natural-curricular-vehicle-for-sel/601731 | © 2021 Industry Dive

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