Social-emotional learning plays an important role in child development and in the classroom. Has. This post has some simple activities to promote these skills in the classroom.
This post contains affiliate links and I may be compensated for your purchase. This won’t cost you anything but helps to offset the costs of running this website to help parents and teachers like you!
What is Social Emotional Learning?
Simply put, social-emotional learning (often called SEL) is the process of learning to comprehend, process, and manage emotions. Many skills factor into SEL including self-awareness, self-management, relationship skills, responsible decision making, and social awareness. These skills are vital for success.
Classroom Activities to Promote Social Emotional Learning
There are many studies that show the benefits of working on these skills with your students. Here are a few activities that would be beneficial for promoting these skills with young students.
Today I Feel Chart
Introducing vocabulary for feelings and emotions is a great place to start. Just attaching a word and awareness to a feeling happening inside can be powerful. It’s really important to think about your student’s ages for this one. Most toddlers can process simple, basic feelings such as happy, sad, scared, etc.
Many classrooms will include a chart with feelings to serve as a reference for students. This chart uses emojis which can be a fun way to talk about emotions. I also think it’s really important for students to see emotions are human faces too.
As children get older they can think about more complex emotions and how to describe their intensity. For example, there is a difference in feeling irritated vs. irate, etc.
Today I Feel Journal
Writing can be a really powerful tool for processing emotions. These Today I Feel Journal Writing Pages are available for preschool, Kindergarten and even first grade students. Students who are not yet writing can draw a picture to express their feelings or simply choose a word to represent how they may be feeling.
Older students can choose a word to describe their feelings and if they are developmentally ready give a reason for their feeling.
Books for Teaching Social and Emotional Skills
Books are powerful tools for teaching and can really help us walk through situations with our students before they actually encounter them. Books also give you a look into another character’s feelings and point of view.
This is really helpful for having discussions with children about feelings, emotions, and behavior. . Here are a few of my favorite books for developing these important social and emotional skills:
When students make connections with a story to themselves, this is called a text to self connection. Making connections with stories is an important comprehension skill too! You can check out some more books that I recommend for this skill in this post, What is a Text to Self Connection and 10 Books You’ll Love Teaching With.
Other Helpful Reads for Teaching SEL Skills
Promotion of Young Child’s Social and Emotional Health
If you are struggling with the thought of teaching this concept or you have concerns, your school counselor is an amazing resource and this is their specialty. As always I hope this post gave you some simple ideas for working on social-emotional learning skills with your students.