Integrating social-emotional learning (SEL) into the classroom is a priority for many educators today. Fortunately, incorporating SEL doesn’t have to be a daunting task that consumes the entire school day. Social-emotional learning encompasses the crucial skills needed to build healthy relationships and navigate life effectively, including self-awareness, responsible decision-making, and everything in between.
This curated list offers a diverse range of Social And Emotional Learning Activities for teachers and administrators. It’s designed to be a resource, acknowledging that no single educator can implement every activity all the time. Instead, we encourage you to explore a few that resonate with your teaching style and your students’ needs. Experiment and observe what yields the best results in your unique classroom environment.
It’s worth noting that the majority of the resources linked below are freely available. This is to ensure that all educators have access to support as they begin to integrate SEL into their classrooms, because every classroom deserves the benefits of social-emotional learning. For those seeking more structured or in-depth activities, we’ve also included some premium paid options. Our hope is that these social and emotional learning activities will make a tangible difference for you and your students.
Crucially, these social and emotional learning activities are adaptable across age groups, from preschool to high school. They can be seamlessly integrated into general education classrooms, special education settings, homeroom periods, or advisory sessions, demonstrating their versatility and broad applicability.
Engaging Social and Emotional Learning Activities for Your Classroom
Here are 30 practical and readily implementable social and emotional learning activities to foster a positive and supportive classroom environment:
1. Daily Greetings: Start the Day Positively
A simple yet powerful social and emotional learning activity is to begin each day with personalized greetings at the classroom door. Offer students a choice of greeting – a wave, a fist bump, or a thumbs up – or simply greet each student by name as they enter. This personalized interaction helps students feel seen, valued, and ready to learn, setting a positive tone for the day.
2. Emotions Check-In: Understanding and Expressing Feelings
Research suggests that verbally expressing emotions can lessen their intensity. Implementing a daily emotions check-in is a valuable social and emotional learning activity. Utilize a daily emotions check-in tool to encourage students to articulate how they are feeling and identify any support they might need to thrive. This practice fosters self-awareness and provides valuable insights for both students and educators.
3. Class Circle: Building Relationships Through Sharing
Gathering students in a circle once a day is a powerful social and emotional learning activity for building community. Utilize targeted relationship-building questions to prompt sharing and open communication. Ensure everyone who wishes to share has the opportunity, while also respecting students’ comfort levels by allowing them to pass if they prefer not to answer a particular question.
4. Journal Writing: Reflecting and Processing Emotions
Incorporate journal writing with SEL prompts as a daily social and emotional learning activity. Provide a prompt each morning to guide student reflection. For younger students or those developing writing skills, drawing responses and sharing them verbally can be an effective alternative. SEL journaling, explored further here, offers a safe space for self-expression and organically integrates SEL with literacy skills.
5. Gratitude List: Cultivating Positivity and Well-being
Practicing gratitude is a simple yet impactful social and emotional learning activity. Dedicate time each day for students to create gratitude lists. Encourage them to list three things they are grateful for, ranging from significant aspects like family and friendships to simple pleasures like a comforting scent or comfortable clothing. Regular gratitude practice contributes to increased happiness, focus, and calmness in students.
6. Morning Meeting: A Structured Start to the Day
Initiate each day with a structured morning meeting, a cornerstone social and emotional learning activity. Any educator can effectively implement a daily morning meeting following these core components: greetings, an SEL-focused topic, guided discussion questions, a few engaging activities, and a closing reflection. This routine establishes a predictable and supportive start to the learning day.
7. Mindful Morning Check-In: Centering and Preparing for Learning
Begin the day with a mindful morning check-in, a five-step social and emotional learning activity designed to center students. Utilize a mindful morning check-in guide that incorporates: five deep breaths, identifying four things they notice, listing three things they are grateful for, stating two positive self-affirmations, and naming one thing they are looking forward to that day. This practice promotes mindfulness and positive anticipation for the day ahead.
8. SEL Read Alouds: Integrating Skills Through Storytelling
Integrate social-emotional skills with literacy through SEL read alouds, a captivating social and emotional learning activity. Read alouds are engaging for students of all ages. Start or end the day with a read aloud, emphasizing relevant SEL skills before, during, and after the story. Select books that focus on specific skills like empathy or friendship, or explore various narratives and identify emerging SEL themes. A helpful SEL read aloud list can provide starting points.
9. SEL Chats: Facilitating Discussion and Connection
Initiate SEL chats by presenting targeted questions, a simple yet effective social and emotional learning activity. Use SEL discussion starters such as: “What is a positive choice you’ve made recently?”, “What skill could you teach someone else?”, or “What are you most confident in?”. These questions foster classroom relationships and promote deeper discussions around key SEL skills like self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making. Create your own prompts or utilize SEL task cards for year-round engagement.
10. Coping Skills Practice: Developing Emotional Regulation
Teaching and practicing healthy coping skills is a vital social and emotional learning activity. Coping skills are crucial for managing emotions and stress effectively. Regularly practice coping strategies together as a class, such as listening to music, drawing, reading, physical exercise, yoga, or talking to a friend. Even brief practice sessions serve as meaningful reminders and reinforce these valuable techniques. Explore various coping strategies suitable for different age groups.
11. End-of-Day Reflection: Processing and Consolidating Learning
The end of the day is an ideal time for reflection, a key social and emotional learning activity. Encourage students to consider what went well, what they learned, what they are proud of, and how they are feeling as they conclude the day. Utilize targeted end-of-day reflection questions to guide this reflective process.
12. Recite Positive Affirmations: Building Confidence and Self-Esteem
Positive self-talk is essential for building student confidence and a growth mindset. Reciting positive affirmations together is a simple yet effective social and emotional learning activity. Select favorite positive affirmations, compile a list, and read them aloud as a class. This can be done at the start of each day or before challenging tasks like tests, fostering a positive and resilient mindset.
13. Practice Mindfulness: Cultivating Presence and Calm
Mindfulness, the practice of being present in the moment, is a valuable self-regulation technique and social and emotional learning activity. It helps students develop calmness, focus, and happiness. Begin with mindful breathing exercises. These exercises can be integrated at any time, particularly beneficial in the morning, during transitions, or before assessments to promote focus and reduce anxiety.
14. SEL Art Activities: Expressing Emotions Creatively
Utilize art activities as a creative outlet for self-expression while integrating SEL skills, a versatile social and emotional learning activity. Self-portraits can encourage self-awareness, while mindful coloring promotes coping skills. Collaborative art projects foster teamwork and communication. Explore various SEL art activity ideas to engage students creatively.
15. Class Meetings: Problem-Solving and Community Building
Regular class meetings are a valuable forum for reviewing expectations and collaboratively solving problems, establishing them as a crucial social and emotional learning activity. These meetings provide a safe space to practice conflict resolution skills, allowing students to share challenges and receive peer feedback. Class meetings are also ideal for regularly reinforcing classroom expectations and norms.
16. SEL Quote of the Day: Inspiring Character Development
Quotes can be powerful tools for character development. Share a meaningful social-emotional quote daily as a quick and impactful social and emotional learning activity. Discuss the quote’s meaning and encourage students to share their interpretations. Quotes like “You are enough and a work in progress all at the same time,” or “It’s never too late to stop and go down a different path,” can inspire reflection and positive self-perception.
17. Daily Check-In Journal: Monitoring Emotions and Needs
Implement a daily check-in journal as a routine social and emotional learning activity. Providing a daily check-in journal first thing each day allows students to express their feelings and identify their needs. This practice not only supports emotional awareness but also integrates writing skills development.
18. “What Would You Do?” Scenarios: Developing Problem-Solving Skills
Integrate SEL skills by discussing “What would you do?” scenarios, an engaging social and emotional learning activity. Present hypothetical situations, such as “You have a big test tomorrow, but a friend wants you to go to the movies. What would you do?”. Encourage students to discuss and share their approaches, fostering problem-solving and decision-making skills. Develop your own scenarios or utilize pre-made scenario task cards to initiate discussions.
19. Brain Breaks: Re-energizing and Refocusing
Scheduled breaks are crucial for replenishing self-regulation skills, making brain breaks an essential social and emotional learning activity. Incorporate movement-based brain breaks like yoga or mindful breathing exercises. Schedule them throughout the day, particularly between tasks, or use them reactively when students exhibit signs of needing to refocus. Explore mindful brain breaks with nature themes for inspiration.
20. Show-and-Tell: Sharing and Building Confidence
Weekly show-and-tell sessions provide students with an opportunity to share items and ideas that are important to them, establishing it as a valuable social and emotional learning activity. Students might share artwork, hobbies, or personal experiences. This activity creates a safe space for communication and allows students to share aspects of themselves with their classmates, fostering connection and confidence.
21. SEL Skill of the Day or Week: Focused Skill Development
Introduce and focus on one meaningful SEL skill each day or week as a targeted social and emotional learning activity. Briefly discuss the skill, ask guiding questions, and then actively highlight instances of students demonstrating the skill in action. This helps students understand and generalize the skill into their own lives. Reference resources like The ABCs of Social Emotional Learning for skill ideas.
22. SEL Crafts & Hands-On Activities: Engaging Multiple Learning Styles
Provide hands-on learning opportunities with SEL crafts, a kinesthetic social and emotional learning activity. Students can create coping strategies wheels or engage in mindfulness with hands-on tools. Hands-on activities are often more memorable and cater to diverse learning styles, enhancing engagement and retention of SEL concepts.
23. Play Games: Learning Through Fun and Interaction
Many games inherently build social-emotional skills. Incorporate games as a fun and engaging social and emotional learning activity, especially during reward time or transitions. Utilize games you already have in your classroom, like Jenga or Scrabble, or select games specifically designed to target SEL skills. Explore resources on using games to teach social-emotional skills for game ideas.
24. Shout Out Board: Promoting Positivity and Recognition
Create a classroom shout-out board, a simple yet impactful social and emotional learning activity for building community. Students can use the board to give compliments and positive feedback to peers and teachers, fostering a culture of appreciation and highlighting positive SEL behaviors.
25. AM/PM Check-In (Individualized): Providing Targeted Support
Offer individualized AM/PM check-ins for students who require additional support, a personalized social and emotional learning activity. During these brief check-ins, an adult can inquire about the student’s well-being, review daily goals, and reflect on the day’s progress, providing focused and individualized attention.
26. Weekly Goal Reflection: Tracking Progress and Growth
Meet with individual students weekly for goal reflection, a focused social and emotional learning activity. These short meetings allow for reviewing goals and tracking progress. Utilize individual binders for students to record their goals, grades, and progress, facilitating self-monitoring and promoting ownership of their learning journey.
27. Daily Jobs: Building Responsibility and Contribution
Assigning classroom jobs is a practical social and emotional learning activity that fosters responsibility and a sense of contribution. Examples of classroom jobs include paper collector, technology setup assistant, or lunch counter helper, giving students ownership and promoting teamwork.
28. Provide Catch-Up and Organization Time: Supporting Executive Functioning
Recognize that everyone needs downtime. Providing designated catch-up and organization time is a supportive social and emotional learning activity. This allows students to reorganize materials, complete missing assignments, and proactively plan for upcoming tasks, supporting executive functioning skills and reducing stress. Explore further resources on interventions for executive functioning challenges.
29. SEL Question of the Day: Prompting Daily Reflection
Present an SEL question of the day as a quick and thought-provoking social and emotional learning activity. Project the question or write it on the board. Allow students time to discuss with a partner and/or write about their reflections, encouraging daily introspection and SEL skill application. Utilize SEL question prompts for daily inspiration.
30. Group Activities or Challenges: Strengthening Community
Implement group activities and challenges to foster a stronger classroom community, a collaborative social and emotional learning activity. Engage students in group projects like designing kindness posters or working through escape room challenges, promoting teamwork, communication, and shared goals.
Comprehensive Social Emotional Learning Curriculum
For a more structured and comprehensive approach, consider utilizing a complete yearlong social-emotional learning curriculum for elementary grades 3-5. This curriculum offers a wealth of resources to target essential SEL skills such as empathy, decision-making, confidence, friendships, and self-control. Learn more about the curriculum here.
Remember to download your free printable poster as a helpful reminder of SEL activities and strategies to implement in your classroom!
Ultimately, the key is to discover the social and emotional learning activities that best resonate with you and your students, creating a classroom environment where SEL thrives.
