What Is Social-Emotional Learning?
Social-emotional learning (SEL) activities teach young learners how to manage their emotions, especially during unfavorable or intense situations. SEL activities also help students learn to show empathy, express concerns and navigate social relationships.
Self-awareness is cultivated with SEL activities that help students recognize their own emotions and thoughts. This allows students to anticipate how their behavior will affect others and what they can do to control their own reactions to their emotions.
Self-regulation focuses on learning to regulate thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Students learn ways to manage stress.
Social awareness helps students understand the perspectives of others; they’ll learn to show empathy, be there for others and participate in the community.
Relationship skills are essential for students to be able to fully connect with other people to build and maintain relationships. These skills involve communication, cooperation and helping others.
Responsible decision-making is one of the results of helping students learn to successfully experience and react to the entire emotional spectrum and broadening their understanding of other people.
Being involved in emotionally fulfilling relationships and successfully maintaining them over time is highly correlated with academic and professional success and has a similar correlation with feelings of general wellness overall. Since students develop most of their relationships in school, it’s essential for them to have instruction on how best to engage in mutually beneficial interactions.
Why Is Social-Emotional Learning Important?
Adding SEL activities to your classroom curriculum can have a myriad of benefits. These activities can help create a safe and positive classroom environment, which will improve academic productivity and efficiency of students. Social-emotional learning activities also help kids feel good about themselves by learning to manage their emotions while striving to do their best. Knowing how to manage their emotions will also help reduce behavior problems among students.
Additionally, SEL activities improve mental health in the classroom by teaching students the vocabulary to express their emotions, thoughts and opinions, and giving them a handful of introductory mental health practices they can use independently.
SEL activities will help students gain a better understanding of themselves and others and improve their academic skills as well. Read on for 15 social-emotional learning activities for elementary classrooms!
1. Good Morning!
One of the simplest SEL techniques you can use in your classroom starting immediately is beginning each day with personal greetings at the classroom door. Students can choose their preferred greeting (high five, wave, thumbs up, fist bump, etc), or you can just greet each student by name as they walk in.
Taking the time to acknowledge each student as an individual will make them feel valued as part of the class.
2. Emotions Check-In
During an emotions check-in, each student should write a few sentences to answer the following four questions.
- How am I feeling right now?
- Why am I feeling this way?
- What might help me feel better?
- Anything else I’d like to share:
Acknowledging our emotions is the first step in processing those emotions. Once we know how we feel, it’s easier to determine what we need to feel comfortable and do our best work.
3. Mindful Morning Check-In
For a mindful morning check-in, students should complete these five prompts:
- Take five slow, deep breaths.
- List four things you can see around you.
- List three things you’re grateful for.
- Say two positive self-talk statements about yourself.
- Name one thing you are looking forward to today.
Mindfulness helps students learn emotional self-regulation by teaching them to pay attention to the present moment and be aware of their own thoughts and emotions with acceptance and without judgment.
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4. Share Circle
Gather the class into a circle and take turns sharing the answer to relationship-building or icebreaker questions. Make sure each student has an opportunity to share their answer and allow anyone who prefers not to share to sit out or to share something else instead.
For maximum benefit, try to have a share circle once a day. Alternatively, when you need a quick activity to fill a short amount of time, call out a share circle question and let students call their answers back.
5. Show and Tell
Give students a chance to share possessions and ideas that are important to them. This can include bringing a toy or book from home to share, discussing their favorite movies or TV shows or showing pictures of important moments from their lives. Ask them to explain what the item is, why it’s important to them and why they would or would not recommend other people get a similar item of their own.
Sharing a piece of themselves with their classmates in a space where they feel safe and comfortable communicating will help students practice relating to others.
6. Gratitude List
Ask students to make a list of things they are grateful for—try for 3 things. These can be big, life-affecting things like moving to a new house or getting a new large purchase, or smaller, more quiet positive moments like a freshly sharpened pencil or looking forward to enjoying the sandwich they brought for lunch. If students keep adding to the same gratitude list over time, regularly practicing gratitude will help them to feel happier, more focused and calmer.
The benefits of keeping a gratitude list will compound over time—try for daily if you can, or add it whenever you have the time. For more gratitude activities, you can download our free Gratitude Writing Bundle.
7. Social-Emotional Learning Chats
Sort your class into pairs or small groups and have them chat to discuss an SEL conversation starter (SEL conversation starters include, “What is something you’ve done lately that you’re proud of?”, “What is a skill you feel especially confident in?”, “What is something you know well enough to teach someone else?” and “What is a good choice you’ve made lately?”)
These questions will help your students build relationships within the classroom, bond with each other and give them another opportunity to think more about essential social-emotional learning skills, such as self-awareness, emotional regulation, social awareness and decision-making.
8. Practice Coping Skills
Learning how to manage emotions and stress means having a collection of healthy coping skills at the ready. Take time during the day to discuss what it’s like to feel overwhelmed and ways to manage that feeling. Practice coping strategies with your class, such as meditating or practicing yoga, exercising, listening to music, drawing, reading, playing with a fidget toy or talking to a friend. This also helps to normalize experiencing difficult emotions and using coping strategies to manage them.
Students who have a good understanding of their own best coping strategies are better prepared to deal with stressful situations when they encounter them in or outside of the classroom.
9. Brain Breaks
A critically important part of supporting self-regulation skills is taking regular breaks. Even just taking a short break to stretch and relax your eyes can increase productivity and focus more than continuing to work without a break. Schedule a few brain breaks throughout the day between tasks. These breaks should involve mindful breathing exercises and movement through stretches or simple yoga poses. They should give the brain a complete break from its previous task.
10. Practice Positive Affirmations
Choose your favorite positive affirmations to share with your students, or create one with the whole class! Ideally, these are a collection of gentle reminders and positive beliefs to grow into, such as “I am proud of myself,” “I deserve to be happy,” “All of my problems have solutions” and “I’m getting better every day.” Read this list at the start of the day, before a big test or when moods are low and the room needs a pick-me-up. Positive self-talk helps students feel confident and prepares them for future success.
11. SEL Read Aloud
You can reinforce your SEL activities’ impact by adding social-emotional learning skills to any other lesson, and one of the easiest places to do this is during read-aloud time! Before, during and after the story, you can pause to highlight SEL skills or briefly discuss how characters could have used SEL skills to solve the problem in the story.
This can be used to work on a specific social-emotional learning skill (empathy, mindfulness, emotional regulation, friendship, etc.), or you can choose any book and ask your students to point out the SEL skills—or the opportunity to use SEL skills—as they come up.
12. SEL Art Activities
Similar to adding SEL skills to a read-aloud, you can also have your class work on social-emotional learning skills during art lessons. Students can focus on self-awareness while creating self-portraits. Mindful coloring activities can be used to work on healthy coping strategies. Teamwork skills can be developed by having students create a shared drawing, collage or other art projects.
13. SEL Skill of the Week
When you first begin introducing social-emotional learning skills, or if there’s a certain one your class needs extra practice with, choose one SEL skill and focus on it for a week. Introduce the skill at the beginning of the week, briefly discuss it with the class and ask some building questions to ensure everyone understands the skill. As you see that skill in action throughout the week, identify it and help students understand how it affects their lives. You can even get the whole class in on calling out the SEL skill of the week when they see it in the wild!
14. End of Day Reflection
The end of the day is the perfect time to look back and reflect. Ask students to consider what went well during the day, what they learned, what they’re most proud of accomplishing, how they feel and what they’re looking forward to next. This can be done in a reflection journal or as a more casual discussion while preparing to leave at the end of the day.
15. Have a Good Evening!
Taking time to say, “Have a good evening!” at the end of the day will help students feel acknowledged and ready to move on to their next activity, similar to how they feel when you greet them every morning with, “Good morning!”
Also, similar to the morning greeting, you can add a short mindfulness or gratitude activity to the end of the day. We suggest going around the room and having each student call out something they’re grateful for, something they’re proud of accomplishing today or something they’re looking forward to in the future.
Help Your Students Become Published Authors!
Another fun, free and engaging way to build SEL skills in the classroom is by publishing a Kindness book with your class through one of our FREE classbook publishing kits! Simply sign up online, and we’ll provide everything you need to publish your students’ writing and illustrations, including any help you need along the way.
Any of the learning activities shared here are great places to begin brainstorming about your classbook project. Each of your students will contribute one page of writing and one page of illustration to help create something so much more than the sum of its parts—you’ll get a free classroom copy and parents can also order copies to keep at home as a literary time capsule and keepsake for the future.
You can also check out our blog and online Teacher’s Lounge for more writing activities, lesson plans and teaching strategies. Now that you’ve collected more social-emotional learning activities for your classroom, you’re better equipped to help all your students achieve their educational milestones!