Unifrog’s SEL and PSHE Lesson Pack: FAQs

Our new whole-school SEL and PSHE Pack makes it easy for you to meet the CASEL competencies and the ISCA objectives, as well as the UK government's objectives for PSHE that are relevant to an international audience. The 82 lessons are:

• Plug-and-play: easy to deliver with minimal prep time.
• Engaging: student-centered tasks empower students to become active learners.
• Supportive: detailed guidance allows teachers and counselors to deliver challenging topics confidently.
• Harmonized with careers and college guidance: the lesson activities help students get the most out of the Unifrog platform.
• Fully editable: allowing you to customize the lessons to suit your context

“Congratulations again on putting together such a great SEL Pack… and delivering a great, thorough and impressive product!"  

- Brooke Fezler, Associate Executive Director of the International School Counseling Association (ISCA)

What’s in the Pack?

80+ downloadable lessons that:

• Cover all five CASEL competencies for students aged 11 to 18, as well as all relevant ISCA objectives and all UK PSHE objectives that are relevant to international schools
• Are arranged by CASEL competency
• Are sequenced across year groups / grades to build students' knowledge and skills, but can also be taught as standalone sessions, and out of the suggested sequence;
• Are available in 15 min versions, with some optional worksheets to support students with additional learning needs. There are also 45 min lesson options for the most challenging topics.
• Make it easy for teachers and counselors who are not specialists to deliver SEL and PSHE with confidence.

How is it structured?

The Pack uses a spiral curriculum model, meaning that, year-on-year, students build knowledge and skills in each topic area.

The lessons are grouped by year group / grade, with a suggested order of delivery. However, to suit your learners you can order the lessons as you like.

Here is a screenshot of the spiral curriculum model. Each lesson’s name is hyperlinked to the profile on the Unifrog platform for the lesson in question:

What topics does the Pack cover?

We’ve organized the topics in the Pack according to the five CASEL competencies. Here are the topics we cover:

To see the full list of lesson titles, click here. 

How does the Pack fit in with the rest of Unifrog?

We’ve designed the Pack to maximize your school’s use of the rest of the Unifrog platform:

• Links to the platform: Each lesson is linked to two relevant Know-how library guides to deepen students' understanding of the topics covered.
   
• The Pack is accessed within the counselor/teacher side’s Resources library. If you subscribe to the SEL and PSHE Pack, it will appear on the Resources library, alongside the existing Unifrog Careers Year Plan that is included as standard in every Unifrog subscription:
  

What do you mean when you say the lessons are plug-and-play?

While all the lesson slides are fully editable, we’ve made it as easy as possible for you to simply open our PowerPoints and teach: 

• Computer access not necessary: Learners can complete the activities in their exercise books or on paper.
   
• Optional support tasks can be printed for learners with additional learning needs: This is the only photocopying teachers or counselors would ever need to do. 
   
• Clearly explained activities on the slides: There’s no need to refer to accompanying notes to understand how to deliver an activity. Here’s an example activity slide:
  

How does the Pack support teachers and counselors to deliver the lessons?

We make it easy for teachers and counselors who are not specialists in SEL or PSHE to deliver our lessons with confidence. To support teachers and counselors, in every lesson we do four main things:

• Guidance: Each PowerPoint begins with an overview for teachers and counselors of the topic area, to help them quickly understand the key issues. Here’s an example:
  
   
• FAQs slides: These help teachers and counselors answer potentially awkward or difficult questions posed by students. Here’s an example:
  
   
• Counselor/teacher notes: Each lesson activity slide comes with notes covering:
  • Prompt questions
  • Suggested answers for activities
  • Supporting facts and information to help teachers and counselors answer students’ questions.
    
     
• Support organizations: Each PowerPoint ends with a list of helpful organizations students can contact for further support with any of the issues raised in the lesson.
  

What do you mean when you say the lessons are engaging?

We know students ‘switch off’ when lessons are too passive. We’ve made sure our lessons are engaging by:

• Putting students’ thoughts and opinions at the heart of the experience. We use opinion lines, mind maps and scaffolded discussion tasks to help students to reflect on their attitudes and beliefs.
  
   
• Encouraging students to synthesize information and apply it to real world scenarios. This might involve replying to a text from a friend, completing a conversation script or identifying the correct course of action to take in a scenario. 
  
   
• Providing challenge and pace. The lessons have clearly defined objectives, and tightly timed activities.
  

How does the Pack support students with additional learning needs?

All the lessons aimed at students aged 11-16 include an optional, printable, support task to support learners with additional learning needs.

Each support task is linked to the lesson activity that we think is likely to be most challenging for students, providing extra scaffolding to help learners access the lesson.

The support tasks vary depending on lesson content, but typical activity types include:

• Sentence starters
• Multiple choice questions
• Cloze exercises
• Simplified case studies with visual prompts

The documents are fully editable, allowing teachers and counselors to tailor the content further to suit their own learners’ needs. Here’s an example:

How does the Pack deal with assessment?

We support you to assess the lessons’ impact on learners in four main ways:

• Starter tasks: Assess students’ prior knowledge of topics.
   
• Plenary tasks: Allow students to synthesize, evaluate or reflect upon what they have learned.
   
• Editable mind map templates: Allow teachers and counselors to assess students’ knowledge, attitudes and beliefs at the beginning of a topic. This mindmap can then be revisited at the end of the topic, with students adding new information, ideas or attitudes in a second color to demonstrate progress.
   
• Reflection slides: Help teachers and counselors to check understanding of key concepts, and evidence how SEL education has affected students’ attitudes and behaviors. These can be completed after each lesson, or series of lessons. You may wish to ask students to complete these reflections in a different coloured pen to highlight where assessment is taking place.
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Who created the Pack and why?

Unifrog’s in-house teacher content team wrote the lessons. This team consists of a former Head of English, a former Head of Psychology and a level 7 qualified careers advisor with experience of delivering careers lessons in a school setting.

How much does it cost?

A site license for a school costs a flat annual fee of £195 ex VAT.

As usual with Unifrog, you don't pay any extra for training and support.

 

Why are you selling it as an annual subscription?

An annual subscription makes sense because the Pack is a ‘live’ set of resources. We will continue to develop it, to improve it, and to add new lessons and features:

• Responding to feedback from teachers and counselors delivering the lessons: Our simple feedback process makes it quick and easy for teachers and counselors to tell us how we can improve our existing lessons, and to request sessions on new topics. Annual updates ensure you benefit from all of these changes and additions, year on year!
   
• Responding to how the Unifrog platform develops: As the platform develops, our lessons will too. You can be sure the lessons will help students to make the most of the newest platform features.

Taking out an annual subscription means you’ll receive the latest improvements to our lessons and you can be sure that your SEL and PSHE offer is always relevant and up-to-date. 

If we subscribe, who can I share the Pack with?

You can share the resources with any colleagues at your school (including ones without a Unifrog account), but you cannot share all or part of it with people outside your school, or upload all or part of it to public shared drives or forums (eg Facebook groups).

If my school subscribes to the Pack, how do I access it?

If your school subscribes, we will make the Pack appear for all teachers and counselors on the teacher side of Unifrog in the Resources library, alongside our tried and tested existing Careers Year Plan.

You can access the Pack:

• As a spreadsheet (in Excel and Google Sheet versions)
   
• On the Resources library interface (searchable by year group / grade, and by topic)
   
• By searching the normal Resources library interface

How can I see it in action? 

Please join the launch webinar on 2 May at 08:00 UK: partners sign up here, non-partners sign up here 
Afterwards we'll upload a recording.

 

How can I access the Pack, or ask more questions about it?

If you're already a Unifrog partner, please contact your Area Manager, or email us at help@unifrog.org.

If you don’t work with us already, please request a demo here (we’ll then set up a meeting with you).

 

For more information about ISCA's student standards, click here.
To learn more about the CASEL framework, click here.