 in number two we're going to talk about emotions and open-ended problem solving. So there is a second way in which emotions impact learning and what we know from the science of learning and development and effective neuroscience is that emotions are not add-ons distinct from cognitive skills. They are not two separate things. They are actually interdependent interdependent neural processes. So Dr. Imordino Yang who's an effective neuroscientist from the University of Southern California often says that we cannot have thoughts without feelings and vice versa. So this idea that emotions are a nuance and we have to leave them out the door when we are trying to do highly cognitive work or when we come into the classroom we leave emotions outside because we really need to focus and pay attention. That idea is completely obsolete. So we really need to bring emotions into the classroom because they have a very important role in that cognitive processing. So students need those emotions in order to make decisions in order to deeply think about what you are presenting to them and to really learn new concepts and new skills. So the implication for the classroom about this research is that learners need these emotions for thinking, for problem solving and for decision-making. So again we need to bring emotions into the classroom because that's the way in which students are going to establish those meaningful connections with the academic content. So one of the strategies that I would recommend using in order to apply these research findings is to create opportunities for students to solve open-ended problems and that may seem like a really big jump from thinking about like okay cognitive processing and emotions are interdependent processes. How do we go from that to this idea of open-ended problems? Well the thing is that activities that are very prescriptive where students have I would say a small role they play a small role in the interaction and in the experience are emotionally impoverished. So we want to make sure that students have opportunities to really wrestle with problems that don't have a right or wrong answer. And some examples of strategies where you can make this happen is through project-based learning, through group work and also through classroom discussions regarding current events where you are presenting students with situations where they may think about like what are the different perspectives about these current events that are happening and there is not a right or wrong answer. And when we engage students in thinking about these issues we are helping them to connect we're helping them to build those experiences and to create emotional memories that are related to the work that they are doing in the classroom. So in order to do that of course you may have different things that you can do and project-based learning is a little more complex in terms of your time investment but for example in group work that is an easy strategy that probably many of you are already using in your instruction to really have students wrestle with those problems. So as you are thinking about this idea of open-ended activities if you implement this in the classroom some of the outcomes that you may observe is that students are able to create these emotional connections to the academic experiences that you present for them and that means that they are going to be able to better engage in that cognitive learning in that the decision making that they need to do in order to learn new concepts to learn develop new skills. So really remembering that we want to create those emotional connections or create the experiences where students can create those connections. And now I think CISO is going to be back talking about some more lessons. Yes we are. I love that one it's so important to think about our need for emotions for learning. So Dr. Martinez she was just sharing about that importance of creating those opportunities for students to solve those open-ended problems because they allow us to better engage in cognitive learning in that decision making. So we have a SCL stories collection which uses interactive read-alouds to support these SCL and writing skills so adding that in. So students they co-write the story and illustrate the story adding their voice adding their creativity using those CISO learning tools and they decide how the story ends which allows them an emotional connection to the learning and allows that emotional connection to the learning to take place. So let's go ahead and jump into one of them. We're going to jump into a second grade SCL story called name my feelings. SCL stories are interactive stories as I said that can be completed as a whole class in centers which means that they can be done in groups just like Dr. Martinez was just saying or independently by the students. So within each SCL story students join a character in this case cute little oatmeal the bear and the teacher can read this story to the students or they can listen to the story in English or Spanish. So let's read the first page this is oatmeal. Oatmeal is a bear who loves to ride her bike to school and as the student continues through the lesson the students stop and think about what might happen if oatmeal throws her helmet. They are able to reflect on their own personal experiences and use that experience to think about the consequences that oatmeal might face if oatmeal does decide to throw her helmet. So we'll continue through this story and Dr. Martinez shared the importance of creating those opportunities for the open-ended problems and the green pages and SCL stories provide students with that opportunity. They get to share their thoughts about what might happen in the story using the SCL learning tools and so this allows that emotional connection to develop for students and relates the learning to their own lives and experiences. So we'll continue through this lesson and as we continue through you'll see that students will learn to name and understand some of those emotions and as they're doing this they're helping oatmeal to identify how she might feel and this can help students learn what to look for when they themselves are experiencing those strong feelings. What does their head feel like? What does their heart feel like? Their body and then each SCL story as we come to the end here another green slide for them to share open-ended and at the very end of the story every single SCL story summarizes that social emotional skill that was learned. So in this case remember strong feelings can make your body feel uncomfortable and can make it hard to think by paying attention to your body your brain can start to think again. The last page of these SCL stories is a connect activity which allows the students to complete this part at home with their families or they could do it with a partner in school but it really emphasizes social emotional learning at home and continues that learning from the classroom into the home as well. So that open-ended problem solving as they work through this SCL story they're working on those writing skills as well and they can do it in groups as well. So we have three of these SCL stories and these are three SCL stories that Dr. Martinez specifically has chosen for all of you. They normalize emotions they bring emotions into the classroom instead of making students leave them at the door and they help them think about how emotions will help them how they can use emotions for problem solving. Again we'll share these at the end in the participant hand out at the very end with all of the links.