Keep these engaging activities in your back pocket to help your students become SEL superstars.
Social-emotional learning (SEL) is all about helping students understand and manage their emotions, build strong relationships, and make responsible decisions—all critical skills for social and academic success.
Although teaching SEL skills might sound like one more thing to add to your plate, the effort is worth the reward. Research shows that students involved in SEL programs not only perform better academically but also show improved behavior, stress management, and overall attitudes toward school and each other.
But don’t worry—incorporating SEL activities into your day doesn’t have to be time-consuming! We’ve done the planning for you with ten low-prep, engaging activities for K–12. These simple, effective routines seamlessly integrate the five CASEL SEL competencies into your daily practice.
Let’s make SEL a natural part of your teaching toolkit!
SEL pillar 1: Self-awareness activities
Self-awareness is the ability to understand one's emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior. Sub-competencies of the self-awareness pillar include identifying perspectives and emotions, developing a growth mindset, and self-assessment.
Building self-awareness helps students recognize their emotions, strengths, and challenges, making it easier for them to set goals and make smart choices. It’s all about boosting their confidence and resilience, which are key to thriving in school and life!
Here are a few SEL activities to get your students on the right track.
For younger students, introduce the Feelings Wheel. This chart breaks down emotions into seven basic categories and provides further detail for each emotion. Show a clip from Pixar’s Inside Out to facilitate a discussion about understanding feelings and why different emotions may crop up.
Writing in a journal can help older students keep tabs on their feelings about school and academics. Providing them with content-specific prompts can help them uncover roadblocks in their learning and give you valuable insights into how you can foster success.
Here’s an example for math class, but you can adapt it to any subject area:
How did you feel before today’s math test? How about after? How do you think your feelings prior to the test affected your score? What can you do to feel even more confident next time?
Scroll down to episode 3, "Class is in Session", for a downloadable checklist of SEL activities.
SEL pillar 2: Self-management activities
Self-management is the ability to regulate your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in different situations. Sub-competencies of this pillar include impulse control, coping mechanisms, planning and goal setting, and setting boundaries.
Anyone who’s been in a classroom for more than five minutes understands how essential these skills are! Students must be able to manage their impulses and emotions, set goals, and effectively plan to cope with the academic and social stressors that occur every school day.
Here are a few SEL activities to help your students develop self-management skills.
This activity helps younger students develop impulse control.
In five-minute bursts, such as at the start of the day or between lessons, ask a high-interest question, but don’t accept responses right away! Give students time to think of their answers and build self-control.
The questions can be non-academic, fun topics, like:
Would you rather have Superman’s or Iron Man’s powers? Why?
If you could eat only one food for a whole week, what would it be?
If you could switch places with any character from a book or movie, who would it be?
Ask students of any age to create a bucket list of things they want to accomplish during the school year. Encourage them to add academic, social, and personal goals to their buckets. Download this fun printable to turn it into an artistic activity!
Revisit the list throughout the year to help students reflect on accomplishments and make plans to achieve their goals.
SEL pillar 3: Social awareness activities
Social awareness is the ability to understand perspectives and empathize with others. The social awareness pillar's sub-competencies encompass empathy and perspective building, modeling respect, and valuing diversity.
Developing social awareness helps students understand and appreciate the feelings and perspectives of others, making it easier to build strong relationships.
Check out these SEL activities to create a caring, connected community where everyone feels valued!
One key skill in developing empathy is recognizing emotions in others. Help younger students learn how to observe and interpret body language and facial expressions with a quick game of charades!
Take turns with your students acting out different emotions (without using words or telling the group what you’re acting out). As students guess the emotion, engage them in conversation about the body language and facial expressions that clued them into how the actor feels.
This YouTube playlist contains several short videos you can share with your middle and high school students to start conversations about kindness, empathy, and connection.
Keep this list in your back pocket for when you have a few extra minutes or whenever your class needs to reset their perspectives. Sometimes a short brain break, conversation, and time to connect can do wonders!
SEL pillar 4: Relationship skills activities
Relationship skills include the ability to establish and maintain healthy relationships. This means students must communicate clearly, listen actively, and so much more! Sub-competencies of the relationship skills pillar are communication skills, collaboration and cooperation, conflict resolution, and offering and seeking help.
It’s vital for students to have a rich toolkit for appropriate communication, both at school and in life. These activities will help your students communicate clearly from kindergarten through their senior year and beyond.
Clear communication is one of the most essential skills students can develop from a young age. Work on communication skills by placing an object in a bag and asking students to give clues about the object. They’ll have to communicate clearly if they want their friends to guess what’s in the bag!
As students enter middle school and beyond, we often ask them to give their peers feedback on academic work. This handout from ACT for Youth provides scenarios that help your students understand how to give positive and corrective feedback without judgment.
SEL pillar 5: Responsible decision-making activities
Responsible decision-making is the ability to make appropriate choices about personal behavior and social interactions across many situations. This includes considering ethical standards, safety concerns, norms for behavior, and understanding the consequences of various actions.
Responsible decision-making empowers students to think through their choices, leading to better outcomes and fewer regrets.
Help students make smart decisions that positively impact themselves and those around them with these SEL activities.
Establishing classroom norms at the beginning of the year is a great time to introduce elementary students to the “why” behind rules and expectations.
As you introduce each norm, ask students questions such as:
Why do we have this rule?
What might happen if we didn’t have this rule?
What does following this rule look like?
And because classroom dynamics change throughout the year, be sure to revisit this exercise as your classroom climate and norms evolve.
Teach students of any age that it’s okay to get stuck, especially when presented with challenging academic tasks that keep them in the zone of productive struggle. It’s all about how they respond to getting stuck that counts!
Show them this broken escalator video, and after you all have a good laugh, conduct a conversation about how stalling and simply yelling “Help!” is far less effective than embracing challenges and trying new ways to work through them.
Are you ready for more?
Incorporating SEL activities into your daily routine is a fantastic way to build a positive and supportive classroom environment. With these quick and easy strategies, you'll be empowering your students to develop essential life skills while making learning even more engaging and fun!
When you’re ready to dive deeper, give us a shout. Our professional learning team has resources to help your classroom and school climate soar even higher.
Before joining Carnegie Learning's marketing team in 2022, Karen spent 16 years teaching mathematics and social studies in Ohio classrooms. She has a passion for inclusive education and believes that all learners can be meaningfully included in academic settings from day one. As a former math and special education teacher, she is excited to provide educators with the latest in best-practices content so that they can set all students on the path to becoming confident "math people."
Explore more related to this authorResearch shows that students involved in SEL programs not only perform better academically but also show improved behavior, stress management, and overall attitudes towards school and each other.
Karen Sloan, Educator of 16 years
