Holistic Literature Education as an Effective Tool for Social-Emotional Learning

This chapter concerns a model of holistic, structured literature education, which has pedagogical value for social-emotional learning. Fiction supports children's personal growth in many ways. The special emphasis lies on the reading process, which aims at empathizing reading and sharing of text-based emotions and experiences. Further individual and common arts-based meaning-making is an intrinsic part of the reading process. The empathized reading process as well as supportive reading environment need to raise educators' consciousness. Creative, arts-based activities offer channels to make children's interpretations of fictional texts visible. There are several presented examples of arts-based methods for literature education and the family literacy practices that have an impact on social-emotional learning. The methods are individual story ending (ISE), kamishibai theater, silent books, and structured reading moments.