Social-emotional learning (SEL) gets a lot of attention these days, and for good reason. SEL activities help support academic success by building resilience, critical thinking, and self-awareness. Some schools use SEL curriculum programs, but every teacher can (and should) find multiple ways to incorporate social-emotional learning activities throughout the day.
Social-emotional skills include self-management, self-awareness, social awareness, relationship building, and decision-making. When you choose learning activities that help students think about feelings, build relationships, resolve conflict, and make good decisions, you’re supporting their social-emotional growth. We’ve rounded up a big collection of ideas for every grade, including middle school and high school SEL activities. Choose a few to try with your students!
New to SEL? Start here: What Is Social-Emotional Learning?
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Preschool and Elementary School SEL Activities
The sooner you start incorporating social-emotional learning activities into your school day, the better. Young kids are still learning to recognize their emotions, communicate their feelings, and manage their reactions to the world around them. Focusing on SEL activities at this point helps develop resilient critical thinkers who develop good relationships with their peers as well as adults. Check out these ideas and free resources, designed especially for pre-K through grade 5.
1. Reference an emotions bulletin board
Little kids have big feelings, and they need to learn the words to match their emotions. Use this free bulletin board kit to create a reference for students as they’re learning feelings. You can use it for a number of social-emotional learning activities. Have students identify the way they are feeling during morning meeting. Or for older students, use the bulletin board to name feelings and synonyms for various feelings. You can also have students refer to the bulletin board when they are analyzing literature and characters’ feelings.
2. Start the day with a greeting
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Start the day at your classroom door greeting each student. Use this greeting sign to give students choice in how they greet you each day. A daily greeting starts the day off on a positive note and gives you a quick check-in with each student. Kindergartners may want to tell you all about their weekend, while you may notice that a high schooler is looking stressed.
Try it: How To Welcome Students in the Morning
3. Refer to a feelings chart
Hilary Statum for We Are Teachers
Talk about feelings on the regular. Use this feelings bundle for various social-emotional learning activities. You can incorporate a feelings check-in each day with younger students and provide older students with all the words they need to describe their feelings in a journal prompt. The more practice students have at expressing their feelings, the better they are at managing them.
4. Use transition time for mental health check-ins
Stephanie Sanders for We Are Teachers
When you’re transitioning from one activity to another, take advantage of the brain break time to sneak in some social-emotional learning activities. Help students check in with how they’re feeling, then reinforce that self-awareness by having students do things like breathing like an animal or striking a yoga pose.
Try it: How To Use Transition Times for Mental and Emotional Health Check-Ins
5. Introduce the Zones of Regulation
Another way for students to check in with their emotions is using the Zones of Regulation. Students identify their feeling zone using colors. Once they know their zone, they can identify which strategy to use to get back to green (if they’re not already there).
Try it: Zones of Regulation Activities
6. Teach active listening skills
Students are better able to learn, build relationships, and increase social awareness when they’re listening. Teach or reinforce whole body listening so students know what listening looks like, and how to manage their bodies so they understand what others say to them. Note that students with ADHD, autism, and sensory processing challenges may not be able perform whole body listening in the same way other students do, but we can make accommodations for students based on what we know they need to be successful.
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7. Build in behavior reflection
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As students develop self-awareness and self-management skills, reflecting on their behaviors is an important step. Use behavior reflection sheets to guide students’ reflection and turn behavior situations into a learning opportunity.
8. Create a calm-down corner
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A calm-down corner is a space students can go to when they need space to manage their emotions. Even going to the calm-down corner when they are overwhelmed or upset shows that students are developing self-awareness and self-management skills. You can include a variety of social-emotional learning activities in your calm-down corner, such as fidgets and breathing exercises.
Try it: How To Create a Calm-Down Corner in Any Learning Environment
9. Create calm-down jars
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A calm-down strategy that students can take with them, a DIY calming jar is a great craft that you can use to talk about the importance of emotional regulation and self-management.
Try it: DIY Calm-Down Jars
10. Use social stories
For young students and students with disabilities who require explicit instruction in social skills, a social story is a great way to teach them step-by-step approaches for social situations. For all students, social stories can help develop social awareness.
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11. Make DIY stress balls
Tom Dittl for We Are Teachers
Part classroom craft project, part SEL activity, DIY stress balls are so much fun! Make them using balloons, slime, beads, and more.
Try it: 4 Different Ways To Make DIY Stress Balls
12. Assign classroom jobs
Classroom jobs build self-management and responsibility skills. While younger students ask for classroom jobs, they’re effective for high schoolers too—the tasks of whiteboard cleaner and technology helper come to mind.
Try it: The Big List of Classroom Jobs
13. Celebrate diversity in everyone
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Understanding diversity is important for self-awareness and relationship building. Engage students in thinking about how they are unique and how our diversity makes us stronger.
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14. Get a classroom pet
Want to teach kids about responsibility in an incredibly meaningful way? A class pet could be the answer! When kids work together to care for a hamster, goldfish, lizard, or tarantula(!), they have to make responsible choices about what’s best for the animal. Sure, it’s a challenge for the adults involved, but the benefits can really add up.
Try it: Best Classroom Pets According to Teachers
15. Use choice boards
If we want kids to make smart decisions, we’ve got to give them the chance to make choices on their own. One way to do this in the classroom is using choice boards. These interactive tools give kids several options to choose from on an assignment. They can evaluate the possibilities, and choose the one that seems right to them.
Try it: How I Use Choice Boards To Increase Student Engagement
16. Use Band-Aids to learn about fairness
Courtesy of Aimee Scott, @aimeesedventures
Tired of hearing kids whine, “But that’s not fair!”? Build students’ social awareness with teacher Aimee Scott’s fairness lesson. Her quick and simple exercise helps kids understand that fairness doesn’t mean everyone gets the same thing—it means everyone gets what they need to be successful.
Try it: The Band-Aid Lesson
17. Develop SEL superpowers
As students learn about social-emotional skills, encourage them to think about their SEL superpower, or the skills they are best at. Once students have identified their superpower, talk about how they can use their SEL superpowers to help others. To share your superpowers, draw superheroes, put students’ pictures on each one, and write about your SEL superpowers and how your students use them around school.
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18. Send home an SEL progress report
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We love the idea of giving kids and their families feedback on their SEL skill development. An alternative progress report like the one this teacher uses can help kids zero in on their strengths and weaknesses.
Try it: SEL Progress Report
19. Help kids learn what smart decisions look like
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It takes guidance and practice to learn to make smart decisions. Teaching kids to be safe in a variety of situations without scaring them or taking away their self-confidence can be tricky. Check out our ideas for teaching safety to young kids on these topics:
Middle School and High School SEL Activities
Don’t abandon social-emotional learning activities as kids get older. Instead, find ways to adjust and adapt them to support tweens and teens and the increasingly complex SEL situations they face. These SEL activities work well with older students and are easy to incorporate in pretty much any classroom.
20. Model and practice positive self-talk
The words students tell themselves impacts their self-management, persistence, and ultimately their success. Model and reinforce positive self-talk with a self-talk poster. Use these phrases when you’re doing think-alouds and prompting students, and encourage them to do the same.
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21. Use the Worry Iceberg
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Building emotional resilience includes understanding how first impressions can be incomplete. Help students develop emotional resilience with a Worry Iceberg activity. Have students think about a situation that made them anxious. What could they see? What was also happening underneath? How does knowing the whole “iceberg” help them understand the situation? And what can they do in the future to get the whole “iceberg” when a situation arises?
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22. Try calming mind-body exercise worksheets
Older students can use meditative exercises like coloring mandalas or doing guided visualizations. Use a variety of mindfulness exercises so each student can find one that works for them.
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23. Explore empathy scenarios
Help students understand and work through common scenarios that engage their empathy as they think about the scenario, how they would feel, and what they would do.
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24. Play Dungeons & Dragons
Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) can be a fantastic classroom game, and it encompasses a wide range of social-emotional learning activities. Players need to work together, know their own strengths and weaknesses, make smart choices, and so much more.
Try it: Teachers Are Using D&D To Teach SEL Skills
25. Engage in fishbowl discussions
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Encourage active listening and communication skills with this classroom idea. After taking some time to think about a topic, a small group of students discusses the issue while other students watch and take notes. After a time, the teacher opens the discussion to the entire group, using notes they made while they watched the small-group discussion.
Learn more: How I Use Fishbowl Discussions To Engage Every Student
26. Offer guidance for making safe decisions
Let’s face it: Tweens and teens aren’t necessarily focusing much on safety—their own or anyone else’s. So it’s important for the adults in their lives to help them learn why safe choices matter and what they look like to begin with. Try these free resources to help kids make smart decisions about:
27. Discuss philosophical questions
One of the most incredible ways to encourage critical thinking and self-exploration is to ask kids thought-provoking questions. Hearing the responses and exchanging ideas can really expand our perspectives and leave us with important food for thought.
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28. Talk about tough topics
School shootings, racially motivated violence, abortion, gun control—these are topics most teachers tend to shy away from in the classroom. The thing is, kids need a safe place to talk about these issues. They need adults who will help them sort out their thinking and separate fact from opinion. Students need to learn to respectfully disagree with one another and how to have constructive conversations that may lead to compromise.
Try it: Our Students Want To Talk About Tough Topics
Social-Emotional Learning Activities for Any Age
With small adjustments, these SEL activities work for preschool, elementary school, middle school, and high school. Remind students that even adults need to keep their social-emotional skills sharp. Everyone can benefit from resilience, self-confidence, and good decision-making!
29. Practice positive affirmations
The way students talk to themselves impacts how they persist, feel about their day, and how they interact with others. Use these daily affirmation cards to help students develop positive self-talk. Pass them out at the start of a week and have students reflect on what each statement means to them. Can they incorporate their statement into their internal talk this week? At the end of the week, have them share or write a reflection about how the statement shaped their week.
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30. Start a daily mindfulness routine
At the start of a lesson or day, take a few minutes for mindfulness. Choose mindfulness activities that match your class. Yoga for a busy bunch, music for older students, or a guided meditation for students who love to visualize a story.
Try it: Mindfulness Activities for Kids
31. Journal for mindfulness
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Younger students can get in the habit of writing their thoughts and feelings with weekly journal prompts. Older students can use a mindfulness journal to track how they feel and what they’re thinking across a week, month, or school year.
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32. Take regular brain breaks
Brain breaks—where you completely set aside academic work and spend time moving, listening, or even being silent—help students reset and get ready for more learning. These quick social-emotional learning activities are great for students of all ages, from one-minute dance breaks to a quick series of yoga stretches.
Try it: Brain Breaks for Kids
33. Schedule a morning meeting
Morning meeting is an important part of elementary school and provides a time for students to reflect on their feelings and actions, talk about concerns that arise during the day, or engage in collaborative decision-making. Even in the upper grades, a once-a-week 10-minute check-in can serve the same purpose.
Try it: Morning Meeting Questions To Start the Day Off Right
34. Set and track actionable goals
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Setting goals contributes to responsibility, but it doesn’t come naturally. We have to teach students how to set meaningful, reasonable targets, and then give them the tools to track their progress. Seeing how they are progressing also helps students build resilience and perspective.
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35. Read SEL stories and books
A story can be a model for social-emotional skills or it can introduce students to scenarios they haven’t experienced yet. For younger students, read a picture book and talk about what happens and how the characters feel. For older students, read and discuss novels with SEL themes. Our list includes picks for every grade level.
Try it: Best Social Skills Books for Kids
36. Track important habits
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Building new habits takes time and persistence. Use a habit tracker to keep track of how students are progressing toward their goals.
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37. Play a cooperative game
Kids get plenty of exposure to healthy (and unhealthy) competition, so use classroom time to shift the focus to cooperation instead. Cooperative games encourage kids to communicate, collaborate, and problem-solve together. Point out the skills they’re using during the cooperative games that will help them in relationships as well.
Try it: Cooperative Games To Promote Comradery and Healthy Competition
38. Ask icebreaker questions
Icebreakers are great for the first day of school, but you can actually incorporate them all year long. Use them when you form new project groups, or when you change the seating around in your room. Talking about different topics helps students practice conversation skills.
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39. Incorporate service learning projects into your curriculum
Service learning projects get kids involved in their communities, finding and implementing solutions to real-world problems. These take some time to plan and execute well, but the social-emotional learning skills kids pick up along the way make all the hard work worth it.
Try it: Meaningful Service Learning Projects for Kids and Teens
40. Hang kindness posters
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This free set of printable kindness posters helps spread important messages. When you first put them up, take time to discuss them with your students. Ask them for examples of what kindness looks like, and encourage them to share stories of a time when their kindness made a difference.
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41. Create collaborative art
Art is about expressing your individuality, but you can also make something pretty incredible when people pool their talents. Murals, hallway and bathroom displays, kindness rock gardens, and other art projects bring students together to bond over creativity and artistic vision.
Try it: Collaborative Art Projects
42. Practice gratitude with bullet journals
Use a bullet journal or list to reinforce gratitude. In younger classrooms, have students call out the things they are grateful for and create a class list. With older students, spend the last five minutes of each class or week reflecting on what they are grateful for.
Try it: Bullet Journal Ideas
43. Teach students to be upstanders
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Upstanders reach out to others, especially those who seem like they might be hurting or struggling. Teach kids about the concept, their role in helping build classroom community and helping those who might not feel included, and hang these free printable upstander posters in your classroom. The tear tags offer positive affirmations.
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44. Use videos to teach relationship building
Everyone can use a reminder about how to make and keep friends. Use friendship videos in morning meeting to talk about how to make and keep friends. With older students, use them as a friendly and funny reminder of what students likely already know but might not be practicing. As students learn more about relationships, use anti-bullying videos to start a conversation about this topic.
Watch: Friendship Videos To Teach Kindness and Compassion and Best Anti-Bullying Videos
45. Stock up on board games
Whether kids are playing to win or working together to achieve a common goal, board games teach lots of decision-making skills. Players have to analyze information, consider their options, and imagine the impacts of their moves on themselves and others. Keep a supply on hand for students to play during indoor recess, or schedule a game day once a quarter just for fun!
Try it: Best Board Games and Other Games
46. Build and nurture a growth mindset in every student
Sarah Cason for We Are Teachers
Harness the power of “yet” by helping students understand that just because they can’t do something the first time doesn’t mean they should stop trying. A growth mindset leads to resilient students who know how to persevere in the face of setback and ask for help when they need it.
Learn more: Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset
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47. Start sticky-note discussions
Teacher Erin Castillo popularized this concept on her Instagram account, and now teachers everywhere are using it. We love it as a unique way to take attendance or as a bell-ringer/entry activity. All you do is post a question on your whiteboard and ask students to respond (anonymously or with names attached) using sticky notes. You can use “Would You Rather” questions or try these SEL prompts to really get students thinking and sharing.
Try it: Sticky Note Discussions Will Change Your Teaching Game
48. Set up an escape room
Students love the interactivity of an escape room, where they have to work together to solve a series of problems before their time is up. Escape rooms encourage a lot of responsible decision-making skills, both individually and as a group.
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49. Read the news as a class
If you’re going to make smart decisions, you need to be informed. But many kids only learn about the news and current events from single news sources, perhaps TikTok or whatever’s playing on their TV at home. Show students how to find a variety of sources to learn about current events. Teach them to think critically and evaluate articles to separate provable facts from opinion. Many teachers love using Newsela, since the articles can be differentiated for different reading levels.
Learn more: Ways To Use Newsela With Your Students
50. Encourage students to reflect as they work
As students are working on math problems, have them jot down how they’re feeling at each step of the process. They can jot down emojis or words that show where they were confident, confused, distracted, or frustrated. This can be helpful when reviewing work and thinking about how their emotional state impacted their learning.
What are your favorite social-emotional learning activities? Come share your ideas and ask for advice in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook.
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