Looking for ways to incorporate social-emotional learning, character education, and life skills into your traditional academic curriculum?
FutureFit is a curriculum enhancement framework designed to empower you to easily integrate social-emotional learning and character education into traditional academic curriculum.
Browse our library of project-based learning (PBL) units to integrate FutureFit's SEL principles into your curriculum.
Keep reading to learn how you can bring life skills to the classroom and new life to your teaching through FutureFit's specially-curated resources, project-based lessons, and variety of mini-activities. If a refresher on social-emotional learning's benefits is needed, we have a great article that breaks it all down for you.
What Is FutureFit?
A Framework to Easily Add SEL and Character Education to What You Already Teach
For a deeper look into how the FutureFit framework can improve student outcomes, download our free white paper, The Importance of Making Students Future-Ready.
We've created and curated a collection of resources that give you the freedom and flexibility to easily add a FutureFit focus to your classroom. Whether you're looking for a complete project-based lesson or worksheets, videos, assessments and activities that integrate SEL and character education, you can find and identify them throughout the TeacherVision site by looking for the FutureFit icons.
Quick links to help you get started with FutureFit
We Took the Whole Child Approach and Created a Collection of Easy-to-Understand Skills
The FutureFit skill domains, conceived with input from educators, focus on a "whole child" approach, inspiring students to reach their full potential in the classroom, in college, in their careers, and in the community. Designed to be agnostic while also acknowledging the important work and prior research conducted in this area, the FutureFit skill domains are robust and flexible. Learn more about the complete list of FutureFit skills here.
How the FutureFit Framework Works
Look for the special FutureFit icons throughout TeacherVision to help identify resources curated for use in social-emotional and character-education lessons.
FutureFit consists of three distinct types of resources:
- FutureFit Projects: Complete project-based lessons developed by teachers and curriculum experts to incorporate FutureFit concepts into standard curriculum units.
- FutureFit Boost Extension Activities: Concise, focused FutureFit activities and projects specially written by teachers and curriculum experts to accompany other TeacherVision resources.
- FutureFit Supplemental Resources: A variety of specially-curated worksheets, videos, lesson plans, reading guides and related resources throughout TeacherVision.
Why Integrate SEL Into Your Curriculum?
Inspire Your Students to be Changemakers
With FutureFit, incorporating skills and concepts like growth mindset, critical thinking, collaboration, self-awareness and service mentality into traditional math, ELA, science, and social studies lessons you already use is simple and straightforward.
Incorporating social-emotional learning and character education into K-12 classrooms measurably improves students’ lives. From higher test scores to better graduation rates to increased lifetime earning potential, there is a direct correlation between integrating SEL and “life skills” into existing curriculum and improved student outcomes.
We know that teaching is aspirational, that you want to make a difference every day, and that you don't get out of bed every morning to preside over the administration of a pile of "drill and kill" practice tests. We also know that a teacher's job is never done, and that finding the time to inspire your students in ways that extend beyond their academic lessons can be challenging.
FutureFit helps your aspirations become inspirations. Adding lessons in effective communication, reflective practice, initiative, global awareness, leadership, and accountability to your teaching is easy using our curated FutureFit resources. The time you'll save looking for the perfect blend of social-emotional and academic learning can now be used to accomplish the things you DO get out of bed for in the morning: inspiring and enabling your students to be capable, well-rounded, inquisitive and productive.
“We can no longer afford to view social-emotional learning and character education as pleasant supplements to the curriculum.”
Michael DiSchiavi, 20-year veteran educator
New York City public school system
Most educators embrace this concept wholeheartedly, and try hard to integrate SEL and other important concepts and ideas into their classrooms. They know that there is much more to teaching than drilling on standards, managing the classroom, and navigating an ever-changing policy and accountability landscape. Inspiring students to achieve and make an impact - in the classroom, in college, in their careers, and in the community - is what gets most teachers out of bed in the morning, and gets them through long days and longer school years.
At TeacherVision, we know that a teacher’s job is never done and that the opportunity to be truly inspirational is, unfortunately, largely aspirational. Life skills and social-emotional concepts are a vital part of the curriculum, but they are hard to teach. Concise and classroom-ready descriptions of “21st Century skills” are lacking. Practical, focused resources are hard to find, organize, and use. Flexible, easy-to-follow strategies for integrating those resources with standard curricula are hit-or-miss.
Still wondering how to get started with FutureFit's social-emotional learning framework? Start with a FutureFit Project below. Or, learn what FutureFit Projects are and how they work here.
FutureFit Projects
FutureFit Projects are designed to supplement a standard 12-15-unit lesson by offering a unique, project-based learning experience that ties together core academic concepts with a set of FutureFit social-emotional and character education skills. Each project is labeled with the FutureFit skills that apply.
