The Evidence Base Behind The First Five

1.1Content-connected humor sustains attention and deepens processing.

"Thus, the application of humor in teaching, particularly when it is relevant to the course content, not only maintains student attentional engagement but also fosters an environment conducive to increased motivation and a deeper capacity for knowledge processing."

Five-decade review of instructional humor research, primary through higher ed ^[1]. The underlying theory is Instructional Humor Processing Theory (Wanzer, Frymier & Irwin, 2010) ^[2]

1.2Teacher humor builds closeness and rapport.

"Studies consistently indicate a preference among students for teachers who integrate humor into their instruction, noting that such an approach enhances the closeness of teacher-student relationships and promotes social interaction."

Zhou & Lee 2025 review ^[1]

1.3Humor lowers tension and increases willingness to participate.

"Furthermore, the use of humor in teaching alleviates students' tension and anxiety, contributing to a constructive and relaxed classroom environment," with students reporting "increased willingness to participate in discussions and share their opinions openly."

Zhou & Lee 2025 ^[1]. Independently corroborated in the ESL review below ^[7]

1.4Shared laughter itself builds relationships.

"A series of online and laboratory studies provide correlational and causal support for the hypothesis that shared laughter promotes relationship well-being, with increased perceptions of similarity most consistently driving this effect."

Kurtz & Algoe 2017 ^[3]

1.5K–12 evidence: appropriate humor predicts belonging, which predicts engagement.

"Results showed that only humor related to course content (positive association) and other-disparaging humor (negative association) were significantly associated with the sense of belonging, which, in turn, was positively associated with a cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement."

395 primary/secondary students ^[4]. Design note: warm, inclusive, content-connected humor is the style the evidence supports, and it is what The First Five curates.

1.6Memes specifically show promise as engagement tools.

"We explore the potential of memes as an educational tool for supporting STEM education and increasing student engagement."

Sidekerskiene & Damaševičius 2025 ^[5]

1.7For adolescents, warm "affiliative" humor is the style tied to deeper engagement.

"Studies considering specific humour styles have identified affiliative humour as increasing engagement in deeper thinking."

Scoping review of 43 studies, ages 11–18 ^[6]

1.8Humor helps English language learners by reducing anxiety.

"…the use of humor in the classroom by ESL teachers can reduce students' stress and anxiety in class, enabling them to learn English in a more relaxed state…"

Systematic review of ESL classrooms ^[7]

2.1Graduated shallow-to-deep question sequences create closeness faster than small talk alone.

"Study I found greater postinteraction closeness with these tasks versus comparable small-talk tasks."

Aron et al. 1997, the foundational "Fast Friends / 36 Questions" paradigm and the direct ancestor of leveled question design ^[14]

2.2Taking turns sharing beats one-sided sharing.

"Participants who disclosed reciprocally reported greater liking, closeness, perceived similarity, and enjoyment of the interaction… than participants who disclosed non-reciprocally."

Sprecher et al. 2013 ^[15]

2.3Asking questions, especially follow-ups, makes the asker better liked.

"…people who ask more questions, particularly follow-up questions, are better liked by their conversation partners."

Huang et al. 2017, JPSP ^[16]

2.4Even "shallow" small talk has measurable value.

"In Study 1, students experienced greater happiness and greater feelings of belonging on days when they interacted with more classmates than usual."

The weak-ties research ^[17]. Direct support for the low-risk question lane.

2.5Teacher self-disclosure builds trust and participation.

"…a teacher disclosing his ideas, builds trust, and thus, entice[s] the students to participate in classroom discussion."

Liu & Zhu 2021 ^[18]

2.6Dedicated brief relational time reduces problem behavior.

The Banking Time randomized controlled trial (470 preschoolers) found reduced problem behavior ^[19].

2.7Responsive Classroom RCT: use of relationship-building practices predicted achievement gains.

Use of practices (Morning Meeting sharing included) predicted achievement gains with effect sizes of .26 in math and .30 in reading ^[20].

2.8For ELLs, trusting talk routines are the recommended condition for oral language growth.

"For English language learners (ELLs) to productively engage in classroom discussions that foster language development, content knowledge, and analytical practices, teachers must create a trusting classroom culture."

AFT / American Educator practitioner guidance ^[21]

3.1Randomized study: greetings raised engagement about 20 points and cut disruption by two-thirds.

"Results revealed that the PGD strategy produced significant improvements in academic engaged time and reductions in disruptive behavior."

Cook et al. 2018, 10 middle school classrooms ^[8]

Magnitude, independently reported: "For the intervention group engagement rose from 58.75% at baseline to 79.70% at intervention… disruptive behaviour… reducing from 13.68% to 4.13%." ^[9]

3.2Foundational: on-task behavior rose from 45% to 72%.

"On-task behaviour increased from a baseline of 45% of observed time to 72% following intervention."

Allday & Pakurar 2007, the foundational middle school study all later work builds on ^[11]

3.3Greetings speed up the start of work.

Allday et al. (2011) found reduced latency to task engagement for all participants ^[12].

3.4Replicated with special-needs learners, including a non-verbal participant.

"Results revealed that staff greetings produced increases in on-task behaviour, during the first ten minutes, from a mean of 54% during baseline to a mean of 79% during intervention phases."

Learners with intellectual disabilities, including one who communicates via Makaton; the effect doesn't depend on verbal ability ^[9]

3.5Newest (2026) evidence: greetings plus specific praise lifted whole-class engagement immediately.

"Following the implementation of the combined PGD and BSP intervention, class-wide AEB immediately increased, and DB immediately decreased across all three classrooms."

Lawson et al. 2026 ^[13]

3.6The mechanism, per the literature: a proactive relational alternative to reactive discipline.

"[PGD can] enhance the climate of the environment; create a smooth, structured and organised start to a session for individuals who may struggle with transitions; foster staff-pupil… relationships; reduce disruptive behaviours; increase engagement; and ultimately promote learning."

Bowring & Toogood 2019 ^[9]

4.1Discovering teacher-student similarities improves relationships and grades (closest experimental analogue).

"…when teachers received feedback about their similarities with specific students, they perceived better relationships with those students, and those students earned higher course grades."

Field experiment, 315 ninth graders ^[22]

4.2Choice tasks boost intrinsic motivation, strongest in children.

"Results indicated that providing choice enhanced intrinsic motivation, effort, task performance, and perceived competence, among other outcomes."

Meta-analysis of 41 studies ^[23]. Would-you-rathers are pure choice tasks.

4.3The multimedia principle: pictures plus words beat words alone.

Mayer's research program shows an image-based prompt gives every student, including emerging readers, a language-independent route into the question ^[24].

4.4Federal practice guide (strong-evidence tier): visuals engage ELLs and stimulate discussion.

"Video clips and visuals are useful because they are engaging for students… materials can help stimulate discussions among students and can be used as a lead-in for small-group and paired discussions."

IES What Works Clearinghouse practice guide for English learners ^[25]

4.5Even minimal staff-student interactions build rapport and belonging.

"…greater relationship strength predicted greater interest/enjoyment, relatedness and belonging."

Seconds-long exchanges were enough ^[26]

4.6Brief positive relational moments at transitions raise K–12 engagement.

The Cook et al. (2018) greetings trial doubles as evidence for quick-connect-style micro-interactions ^[8].

4.7Icebreaker-style prompts increase participation and community.

"…a statistically significant increase in students' self-reported engagement and participation… a greater sense of community and connectedness."

Senior high school students ^[27]

4.8Opinion-sharing (student voice) links to engagement via belonging.

"…student voice can improve student engagement… by highlighting the roles of teacher care and feelings of competence and belonging."

67 urban high schools ^[28]

5.1Naming emotions calms the brain's threat response.

"The results indicated that affect labeling, relative to other forms of encoding, diminished the response of the amygdala and other limbic regions to negative emotional images."

Lieberman et al. 2007, the foundational fMRI study ^[29]

5.2Affect labeling regulates emotion without effort.

"Putting feelings into words, or 'affect labeling,' can attenuate our emotional experiences… affect labeling is a form of implicit emotion regulation."

Decade-later review ^[30]

5.3Emotional granularity predicts healthier coping.

"…individuals who experience their emotions with more granularity are less likely to resort to maladaptive self-regulatory strategies such as binge drinking, aggression, and self-injurious behavior… and experience less severe anxiety and depressive disorders."

Kashdan, Barrett & McKnight 2015 ^[31]. It is also a trainable skill.

5.4Teaching emotion words in school improves behavior and academics.

"Perhaps most impressive is evidence that teaching school-aged children to broaden their knowledge and use of emotion words (20–30 minutes per week) improves their social behavior and academic performance in school."

Kashdan et al. 2015 ^[31], citing Brackett et al. 2012 ^[32]

5.5RULER / Mood Meter cluster RCT (62 schools): warmer, more connected classrooms.

"…classrooms in RULER schools were rated as having higher degrees of warmth and connectedness between teachers and students, more autonomy and leadership among students…"

Grades 5–6 ^[33]

5.6Year two of the same trial: emotional gains came first, instructional gains followed.

"…classrooms in RULER schools exhibited greater emotional support, better classroom organization, and more instructional support at the end of the second year."

Hagelskamp et al. 2013 ^[34] (same trial as 5.5, one independent sample)

5.7The 2023 meta-analysis confirms broad benefits of SEL programming whose common core includes emotion identification.

424 studies, 575,361 students ^[66]; see the cross-cutting section below.

5.8Federal trauma-informed guidance explicitly recommends daily check-ins and predictable routines.

"Create consistent schedules and predictable routines… Do a daily check-in with choices…"

IES REL Appalachia ^[35]

6.1Meta-analysis (24 school studies): moderate benefits, largest on cognitive performance.

"Overall effect sizes were Hedge's g = 0.40 between groups… cognitive performance g = 0.80, stress g = 0.39, resilience g = 0.36."

Grades 1–12 ^[36]

6.2RCT-only meta-analysis (33 trials): small, reliable improvements.

"…significant positive effects of MBIs… for Mindfulness, Executive Functioning, Attention, Depression, Anxiety/Stress and Negative Behaviours, with small effect sizes… ranging from .16 to .30."

Dunning et al. 2019 ^[37]

6.3Updated 2022 meta-analysis (66 RCTs, 20,138 youth): benefits for anxiety and stress, attention, executive functioning, and behavior.

Versus passive controls, d = 0.12–0.35 ^[38].

6.4Delivery matters: teacher-delivered programs and varied practices show the strongest school outcomes.

Effects were largest for ages 15–18 ^[39].

6.5Brief daily dose: 10 minutes a day of audio-guided mindfulness improved 3rd graders' reading and science grades.

"…without disrupting teaching operations (N = 191)."

Bakosh et al. 2016 ^[40]

6.6ADHD: pooled RCTs show a large effect on core ADHD symptoms.

g = 0.77 in children ^[41]

7.1Positive psychology interventions reliably raise wellbeing (39 RCTs).

"The standardized mean difference was 0.34 for subjective well-being… effects are fairly sustainable."

Bolier et al. 2013 ^[43]

7.2In schools, with adolescents: small but durable gains.

"The results showed small effects for subjective well-being (g = 0.24), psychological well-being (g = 0.25), and depression symptoms (g = 0.28)… effective and easily implemented tools."

Tejada-Gallardo et al. 2020 ^[44]

7.3Gratitude works. Two independent meta-analyses agree.

g = 0.22 across 25 RCTs ^[45] and g = 0.19 across 145 papers, 24,804 participants, 28 countries ^[46].

7.4Kind acts in classrooms boost wellbeing and peer acceptance.

9–11-year-olds assigned three kind acts a week "experienced significantly bigger increases in peer acceptance… than students who visited places."

Layous et al. 2012, a landmark classroom RCT ^[48]

7.5The mechanism: broaden-and-build.

Positive emotions "broaden an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire… which in turn build that individual's personal resources; ranging from physical and intellectual resources, to social and psychological resources."

Fredrickson, the foundational theory ^[49]

7.6Positive emotion predicts academic engagement.

"The results demonstrate that positive emotions have significant direct effects on life satisfaction and academic engagement."

Ye et al. 2025 ^[50]

7.7Positive climate links to achievement and behavior.

Wang & Degol's integrative review positions climate as a lever for both ^[51].

8.1Character education works (K–12 meta-analysis, 64 studies, 96,930 students).

"…yielded a small but statistically significant average effect size, g = 0.33."

Johnson et al. 2022 ^[52], corroborated by Brown et al. 2023

8.2Character is "caught" through role models.

"Character is largely caught through role-modelling and emotional contagion… Good character is the foundation for improved attainment, better behaviour…"

Jubilee Centre framework ^[53]

8.3Exemplar stories motivate moral behavior. Relatable framing matters.

"The stories of attainable and relevant moral exemplars… more effectively promoted students' service engagement compared with those of unattainable and irrelevant moral exemplars, such as historic moral figures."

Middle school quasi-experiment ^[54]. Design implication: pair famous-figure quotes with discussion connecting the wisdom to students' own lives.

8.4Brief values reflection produces lasting benefits.

"Timely affirmations have been shown to improve education, health, and relationship outcomes, with benefits that sometimes persist for months and years."

Annual Review synthesis ^[55]

8.5Values-reflection replicates at district scale.

"…persistent achievement gaps… can be mitigated by brief, yet theoretically precise, social-psychological interventions."

11-school randomized trial, 7th grade ^[56]

9.1Short is the point: engagement collapses past about 6 minutes.

"Video length was by far the most significant indicator of engagement… The median engagement time is at most 6 minutes."

6.9 million viewing sessions ^[57]

9.2Video works best embedded in follow-up discussion.

Peer-reviewed guidance: manage cognitive load, maximize engagement, promote active learning ^[58]. The First Five's watch-then-talk structure matches.

9.3Meta-analysis: prosocial media increases prosocial behavior and empathy.

"Results from 72 studies involving 243 effect sizes revealed that exposure to prosocial media was related to higher levels of prosocial behavior and empathic concern and lower levels of aggressive behavior."

Coyne et al. 2018 ^[59] (includes children and adolescents)

9.4Moral elevation in children increases prosocial tendencies beyond mere happiness.

"The Moral Elevation group exhibited a significantly stronger implicit prosocial bias… compared to both Joy and Neutral groups," with the authors endorsing "moral elevation interventions in educational settings."

Children around age 10 ^[60]

9.5Video modeling is an established channel for social-skill learning in special education.

"The use of self-video modeling speeds up the acquisition of skills to perform communicative/social tasks…"

Autism research ^[62]; foundational meta-analysis Bellini & Akullian 2007

9.6Emotionally positive multimedia improves processing and motivation.

"…positive emotions in multimedia-based learning facilitate cognitive processes and learning."

Um et al. 2012, a foundational experiment replicated in 2014 and 2015 ^[63]

10.1The landmark meta-analysis: an 11-percentile-point achievement gain.

"…SEL participants demonstrated significantly improved social and emotional skills, attitudes, behavior, and academic performance that reflected an 11-percentile-point gain in achievement."

213 programs, 270,034 K–12 students ^[64]

10.2Benefits persist years later, equitably.

"Benefits were similar regardless of students' race, socioeconomic background, or school location."

Follow-up meta-analysis, 97,406 students ^[65]. This is the strongest verified equity statement for diverse learners.

10.3The 2023 meta-analysis (424 studies, 575,361 students, 53 countries) reconfirms it all.

Improved "skills, attitudes, behaviors, school climate and safety, peer relationships, school functioning, and academic achievement" ^[66].

10.4SEL pays for itself.

"When costs and benefits are combined together, these SEL interventions easily pass a benefit-cost test."

Belfield et al. 2015 ^[67]

10.5Teacher-student relationships drive engagement and achievement, more so in secondary school.

Meta-analysis of 249,198 students: relationship leads to engagement, which leads to achievement, with the relationship-engagement link stronger in secondary school ^[68]. This counters the assumption that connection routines are only an elementary concern.

10.6Teacher support is the strongest school-controllable predictor of belonging.

"Teacher support and positive personal characteristics were the strongest predictors of school belonging."

Meta-analysis, 67,378 adolescents ^[69]

10.7School connectedness protects mental health (current national data).

"High levels of school connectedness were associated with lower prevalence of all mental health and suicide risk indicators (aPR range = 0.63–0.70)."

CDC, 2023 YRBS ^[70], corroborated by the 2021 YRBS analysis

10.8The closest experimental analogue, small daily doses of deliberate relationship-building (Establish-Maintain-Restore), improves behavior in RCTs.

Elementary: "significant improvements in teacher-reported teacher-student relationships as well as… academic engaged time and disruptive behavior" ^[71]. Middle school, after only 3 hours of teacher training: relationships g = .61, engaged time g = .81, disruptive behavior g = 1.07 ^[72].

10.9Teacher benefit: SEL reduces burnout symptoms.

"…a statistically significant medium effect size favoring the experimental group regarding the impact of SEL on emotional exhaustion (g = -0.37) and personal accomplishment (g = 0.45)."

Oliveira et al. 2021 ^[73]

10.10Convergence statement usable in the guide.

"They produce positive benefits for participating students on a range of behavioral, attitudinal, emotional, and academic outcomes that are evident both immediately after the intervention and during various follow-up periods."

Mahoney, Durlak & Weissberg on four meta-analyses by three research groups on two continents ^[74]

Bowser (2026), Building Belonging and Relationships, EdD dissertation, Neumann University^[76]

The first empirical study of The First Five is a qualitative comparative case study of two districts (about 6,900 students combined), each with a year-plus of districtwide elementary implementation. The study draws on 12 teacher interviews, 89 teacher surveys, and document review.

Table 1. Teacher survey results by district (Bowser, 2026).

Survey item	District 1	District 2
The First Five somewhat or greatly improves teacher-student relationships	94.4%	97.3%
The First Five strongly or somewhat supports student belonging	94.5%	89.1%

Teachers described the routine as "an emotional entry point into the instructional day," and reported that students arrive "highly engaged when they come in and are free to express themselves and this cuts down on incidents throughout the day" (p. 84).

"You can't teach math to a child who's still upset." (Participating teacher, p. 113)

"I no longer spend the first twenty minutes trying to calm everyone down… The First Five does that work." (Participating teacher, p. 84)

"It's not a one-time thing. They trust it because it happens every morning." (Participating teacher, p. 88)

The implementation findings match what partner schools report. Leadership legitimization matters ("When our administrators talk about it, model it, and check in on it… It becomes part of how we do school," p. 94), adaptive fidelity beats rigid scripts ("commitment to purpose rather than rigid adherence to format," p. 93), and in a novel finding, students themselves demanded the routine when it was skipped, so "fidelity was reinforced relationally rather than administratively" (p. 137).