Educators understand that the importance of social and emotional learning (SEL) in schools lies in its ability to teach students how to manage emotions, build healthy relationships, and make responsible decisions. These skills are not only instrumental to academic success but also essential to navigating everyday life.
Whether or not you are looking to implement an SEL curriculum, you can start with these social and emotional learning activities.
SEL activities and lesson plans
Use these five social-emotional learning activities for elementary school students to work toward building strong relationships. Explore SEL lesson plans for each competency.
Embrace SEL in the classroom with these SEL activities for middle school that address CASEL’s five core competencies.
These seven SEL activities for high school students are based on CASEL's core SEL competencies. Help your students become independent and meaningful contributors to society
Introduce your students to the five competencies of SEL with these writing and journal prompts for elementary, middle, and high school.
SEL activities are designed to help students develop key life skills such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
Share these SEL remote activities with your students at home to help them develop SEL skills, like self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and responsible decision-making.
Ready to help your kiddos develop meaningful relationships and connect with their classmates? Try these classroom community-building activities for elementary students.
Check out a few suggestions for empathy activities for middle schoolers and find new ways for teaching empathy in the classroom.
Use these SEL World Kindness Day activities and ideas for the International Day for Tolerance to ensure that every day includes a little (or a lot of!) kindness in your school.
Celebrate World Kindness Day with 5 free kindness activities for the classroom. Encourage empathy, inclusion and acceptance.
Former teacher and current HMH Chief Academic Officer Francie Alexander offers educators some tips on how to create a kindness movement in their classrooms and communities.
Explore “All About Me” activities for elementary and middle school students. Help your students to celebrate what makes them different.
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This blog post, originally published in 2021, has been updated for 2024.
The views expressed in our blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of HMH.
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