25 Social Emotional Learning Activities & How They Promote Student Well-Being

Social emotional learning (SEL) is more important now than ever.

SEL is the process by which people, both children and adults, develop the knowledge, self-awareness and personal well-being to build the emotional competencies that help them thrive in both academics and life.

Likewise, social emotional learning activities give kids the tools they need to deal with challenging situations, cope with new environments, develop a growth mindset and forge positive relationships with their peers and beyond.

Wondering how to bring social emotional learning to your classroom or school? We'll cover:

• What social emotional learning is, and why it's important
• A list of social emotional learning activities for all ages
• Steps for choosing and implementing a social emotional learning curriculum

We even asked teachers who use Prodigy to give us their recommendations!

Plus, the teachers here at Prodigy have put together a free, downloadable social emotional learning activities PDF filled with worksheets and activities for your classroom.

Social emotional learning helps students build social skills, form healthy relationships and manage their emotions. 

According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL):

For many students, school is a major source of meaningful relationships and one of the first places they make social connections outside of their immediate family. Building these skills from a young age is incredibly important for academic and lifelong success.

So what? You might say. Children learn these skills on their own — they don’t need to be taught at school.

You might be surprised.

Social emotional learning needs to be taught to have maximum impact. Researchers agree that students with well-developed social emotional skills see improved academic and social outcomes:

So what, exactly, does social emotional learning include? CASEL lists five core social emotional learning competencies:

1. Self-awareness — Recognizing emotions and thoughts, understanding how they influence behavior and assessing personal strengths and weaknesses.
2. Self-management — Regulating thoughts, emotions and behaviors. Setting goals, controlling impulses and managing stress.
3. Social awareness — Understanding the perspective of others, showing empathy for diverse groups of people and finding support through family, school and community relationships.
4. Relationship skills — Communicating, cooperating, resisting negative pressure and offering help. Building and maintaining healthy relationships.
5. Responsible decision-making —Making ethical and respectful choices about personal behavior and relationships, and evaluating the consequences of decisions.

Social emotional learning equips students with skills they’ll use well after they leave school, and is essential part of the way students learn in a rapidly changing society.

Plus, social emotional learning impacts academic outcomes for students of all backgrounds!

A 2011 meta-analysis on the effectiveness of social emotional learning found students in schools with high-quality social emotional learning programs showed an average gain of 11% in academic achievements.

For every dollar schools invest in social emotional learning, they see an average long-term return of 11 dollars in their school and the wider community.

The earlier social emotional learning skills are developed, the better

According to a study commissed by the OECD , teaching kindergarteners basic social and emotional skills“[can] have long-term academic benefits on students’ reading and vocabulary, including in high poverty schools, suggesting that SEL may assist in closing achievement gaps.”

Overall, students with strong social and emotional skills are:

• More engaged in learning
• Less likely to drop out of school
• Less likely to have behavior issues
• More confident and have higher self-esteem

Think of how many students could you reach with the right social emotional learning program or activities!

No matter what grade your students are in, these activities can be adapted to help teach core social and emotional skills.

1. Art activities

SEL skills: Self-awareness
Materials: Art supplies, music

Art is a great way for students of all ages to relieve stress and express their emotions in a positive, healthy way.

Start by picking a piece of music (or even a poem or story) for students to react to. Ask them to use art supplies to react, providing prompts like:

• How did it make you feel?
• Is this music happy or sad?
• What colors did the music remind you of?

2. Practical tasks

SEL skills: Responsible decision-making, self-management
Materials: Job chart, name tags, instructions and supplies for each task

Your classroom is a busy place, and there’s a lot happening. Keep it organized with a chart that encourages students to take responsibility and complete simple, age-appropriate classroom tasks like:

• Watering plants
• Sharpening pencils
• Erasing the chalkboard
• Keeping track of timed activities
• Delivering attendance to the office
• Keeping the classroom library organized
• Turning the lights on and off in the classroom

If you’re teaching remotely, put students in charge of:

• Tracking attendance
• Moderating the chat section
• Giving a short weather report
• Choosing from a list of brain breaks

Rebecca K., a 3rd grade teacher, says:

3. Mindfulness activities

SEL skills: Self-awareness, self-management
Materials: None! Just a list of your favorite mindfulness activities

Alright, let’s pause.

Breathe in, and out.

Lower your shoulders and sit up straight.

Doesn’t that feel better?

Mindfulness breaks can help students of all ages learn how to identify and regulate their emotions when they’re sad, scared or stressed.

Take a minute in your classroom and try some of the activities below.

Teach students to STOP when they encounter an emotional situation. Roleplay some stressful situations and teach students to:

• Stop
• Take a breath to calm down
• Observe the situation
• Proceed with a solution

Ask students to identify where they’re holding stress in their bodies. This can be tense shoulders, a frown or even a bouncing leg. Guide them through releasing stress for a more balanced body.

Pay attention to the senses. Ask students to identify:

• Five things they can see
• Four things they can touch
• Three things they can hear
• Two things they can smell
• One thing they can taste

4. Goal-setting activities

SEL skills: Self-management
Materials: A journal or goal tracker

A big part of social emotional learning is cultivating a growth mindset — and what better way to do that than setting goals?

Make goal setting a regular part of your classroom routine, whether you:

• Host student-led conferences — Set academic and behavioral goals
• Start a new unit — Use a KWL (Know, Want to Know, Learned) chart to help students identify which skills they want to develop
• Give feedback on a project — What did students do well? What should they focus on next time?

Jane H., a teacher, knows the importance of building a growth mindset:

5. Student check-ins

SEL skills: Self-management, social awareness
Materials: None

When students learn, they bring their emotions with them. Prodigy teachers like Arpie M. and Amber A. recommend starting your day with a check-in to understand what students are feeling:

6. Reading books

SEL skills: Self-management, social awareness
Materials: Your favorite SEL book (try this list for ideas)

Boost reading comprehension and social emotional learning with books designed to teach key social emotional learning skills. Co-learner and elementary teacher Lesley P. says:

Use social emotional learning books as an opportunity to introduce your students to diverse authors, characters and emotions.

For younger students, use read-alouds to model emotions and encourage students to respond with their own feelings. Older students can respond in class discussions or journal entries.

7. Setting aside time for online community

SEL skills: Relationship skills
Materials: Video conferencing platform and computer

It’s hard to build a community if you need to teach your students through distance learning. So try setting aside a few minutes a week where students (and their parents) can drop in and chat about:

• Non-school things
• Clarification on recent assignments or lessons 
• Challenges or opportunities from the past week

If you’d like, bring along some icebreaker questions or online-friendly games you know your students will love. Your students will learn the value of relationships, and you’ll get to know your students and learn how to engage with them in meaningful ways. 

8. Icebreaker activities

SEL skills: Self-awareness, relationship skills
Materials: Our list of the best classroom icebreakers

Icebreakers are a fun and easy way for students of all ages to share a little bit about themselves in a low-pressure environment. They also give students a chance to reflect on their own emotions and desires for the year, and help them build relationships with each other.

Lauren W., a math teacher, loves doing this early in the school year:

And special educator, Crystal M., has figured out an effective way to incorporate icebreakers into virtual classrooms:

It’s never too early to start developing social emotional skills. Here are some activities you can use with the youngest students in your school!

9. Daily greetings

SEL skills: Self-awareness, relationship building
Materials: Chart or cards with greeting choices (optional)

Get students excited about a new school day and give them the chance to set personal boundaries. 

When students arrive in the classroom — either virtually or in person — give them a list of different greeting options. 

Some popular choices are:

• Wave
• Foot tap
• High Five
• Fist bump
• Thumbs up
• Jazz hands
• Elbow bump

When you give students a choice, they can stop and evaluate their wants and needs, as well as their mood coming into the classroom. 

10. Emotion identifiers

SEL skills: Self-awareness, social awareness
Materials: Paper plates, crayons, popsicle sticks

The best social emotional learning strategies are incorporated into regular classroom instruction. 

Try this simple craft: Hand out paper plates and have students draw faces that represent simple emotions — happy, sad, angry and confused can be good places to start. 

Attach the plates to popsicle sticks and use them as masks during read-alouds. While you’re reading a story, ask your students how they think the characters are feeling. 

You can even use the masks as a quick morning check-in to understand student emotions at the beginning of the day.

11. Calm-down corners

SEL skills: Self-awareness, self-management
Materials: Assorted fidgets, furniture and other items as needed

Being a kindergartener can be stressful — they’re encountering new experiences, new friends and an unfamiliar environment.

Create a calm-down corner to help students deal with hard emotions. A calm-down corner looks different in every classroom, but try adding:

• Books
• Fidgets
• Flexible seating 
• Calm-down jars

Send students to the calm-down corner when they need some quiet time alone, and encourage students to pay attention to their own emotions and use the resources on their own.

Use these activities to teach elementary students about identifying emotions, being kind and working together.

12. Encouraging positive self-talk

SEL skills: Self-awareness, self-regulation
Materials: Our list of positive affirmations for kids

“This is too hard.”

“I guess this is good enough.”

“Everyone is better at this than I am!”

As a teacher, you have an important opportunity to build students up and influence how they think about themselves.

Gently correct students when you hear negative self-talk throughout the day, and use it as an opportunity to suggest kind thoughts:

• “I’m going to work hard and get this right.”
• “I can do better.”
• “How are my classmates solving this problem?”

Model this throughout your teaching, too — if you make a mistake, don’t berate yourself. Use it as an opportunity to demonstrate positive self-talk and try again.

If you're looking for inspiration, check out this list of 27 positive affirmations for kids. It covers affirmations designed to:

• Boost motivation
• Grow self-esteem
• Recognize self-love

It also includes some bonus mantras made specifically for grown-ups!

13. Learning about student interests

SEL skills: Relationship skills
Materials: Bingo cards with descriptions

Build connections between students with a fun game of bingo! Hand out cards to students and ask them to find classmates that match the description on each square.

Use our bingo card to customize your set with descriptions like:

• Plays soccer
• Likes spinach
• Has two or more siblings
• Likes cats better than dogs
• Speaks more than one language
• Likes pancakes more than waffles
• Favourite ice cream flavour is chocolate

And whatever else you can think of! Not only does it introduce students to diverse backgrounds and experiences, it’s also an excellent first day of school activity.

14. Random acts of kindness

SEL skills: Relationship skills, social awareness
Materials: Our list of 93 random acts of kindness ideas!

Promote random acts of kindness in your classroom to build a positive school culture and help students develop empathy. 

Some of our favorite ideas are:

• Talk to a classmate that looks lonely
• Lend a friend your favorite book or movie
• Write thank-you notes for the school janitor
• Hold the door open for the person behind you
• Donate old towels and blankets to a local animal shelter

Students will learn the value of being kind to others and build relationships in and outside of the classroom! 

15. Writing a story together

SEL skills: Relationship skills, social awareness
Materials: Cards with written or visual prompts

Hand out cue cards with story prompts or pictures. Start the story with “Once upon a time,” then move to the next student. Students must use the prompt on the card and their social awareness skills to work together and build a compelling story.

Record the stories students come up with! Afterwards, ask them questions like

• How did the story make you feel?
• What was the happiest part of the story?
• What was the saddest part of the story?

16. Morning questions

SEL skills: Relationship skills, social awareness
Materials: A list of questions that will resonate with your students!

Start the day with a bang! Arianna R., a 2nd grade teacher, says:

You’ll learn more about your students, and students will be able to bring more of themselves to the classroom. 

Try questions like:

• What’s your favorite holiday?
• If you were an animal, what would you be?
• If you could go anywhere on vacation, where would you go?

Morning questions are also easy to adapt for online learning, and can help students feel a sense of community even if they’re not with their classmates in person. 

17. Playing games

SEL skills: Relationship skills
Materials: Varies based on game

There are plenty of reasons game-based learning is great for students, but one of the most compelling is that it teaches students how to work together, solve problems and find solutions — while they learn.

A look inside the classroom of Special Populations Teacher, Melissa B., illustrates this:

Elementary is the perfect time to teach students the basics of turn-taking and emotional regulation. Check out our list of math games, or our list of the best board games for kids.

For many students, middle school means changing social relationships and new responsibilities. Help them cope with social emotional learning activities that build relationship skills and self-awareness.

18. Journal writing

SEL skills: Self-awareness
Materials: Notebook and pen, journaling prompts

Journaling is a great way for middle school students (and up!) to process information, make sense of their emotions and reflect on the lesson. 

Give students regular time each week for journaling. Provide prompts like:

• What are you grateful for today?
• What does self-care mean to you?
• What’s your favorite hobby? Why?
• What person in your life makes you feel confident?

To encourage student reflection, consider grading just one or two entries students choose to show you from the journal.

19. Debating

SEL skills: Relationship skills, self-management, responsible decision making
Materials: Debate questions related to your lesson

Debate is a great way to teach middle school students how to formulate arguments, actively listen and respectfully disagree with their peers.

Plus, it’s easy to incorporate into your lesson!

Pick a debate topic around a novel your class just finished, a current event or anything else your students are passionate about. 

Divide into teams, then have students create a structured argument and respond to their classmates. It’s also a great way for students to practice public speaking skills!

20. Quote of the day

SEL skills: Self-awareness, relationship skills
Materials: A list of relevant quotes (check out our list of teacher quotes!)

Ask your students to respond to a significant quote on a given topic or issue and challenge them to think about the speaker’s emotions, encouraging empathy and critical thinking.

Pick a quote and put it up on the board. Either in small groups, individual journaling responses or a whole-class discussion, ask students:

• What emotion is the speaker experiencing?
• What emotion does this quote make you feel?
• What background information and worldview is the speaker referencing?

21. Student-led celebrations

SEL skills: Social awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision making
Materials: Party supplies, rubric, examples

Let your students blow off some steam and work together to plan a classroom party! Turn a celebration into a chance to teach responsibility, budgeting, time management, teamwork and more. 

Provide students with a rubric to outline expectations, a clear time constraint, and a budget (even if that budget is $0.00).

Challenge them to:

• Pick a theme
• Send invites
• Pick a date and time that works
• Decorate the classroom
• Plan and run activities the whole class will enjoy
• Organize setup and clean up afterwards

You might be surprised at the ideas they come up with!

It’s critical for high schoolers to master effective communication and build relationships with people outside the classroom, whether they’re heading to college or going straight into the workforce. 

22. Class meetings

SEL skills: Responsible decision-making, relationship skills
Materials: None

Make space for community and responsibility in your high school classroom and hold class meetings on a weekly or monthly basis. 

Challenge students to bring ideas that make the class better, include all students in activities and solve problems. 

You can use this as a space to gather student feedback, solve disagreements, plan class events or even just share!

It might take a bit for students to open up, but the results will be worth it. Consider using a Google Form or suggestion box in your classroom, then address the feedback as a group and develop solutions together.

23. Interest presentations

SEL skills: Self-awareness
Materials: Schedule for presentations, idea prompts if needed

Every student is passionate about something — cartoons, soccer, knitting, bass guitar, you name it! 

Harness those passions for a more involved learning experience! Ask students to find a real-world application they’re passionate about for what you’re learning in class. 

Some ideas include:

• Baseball and statistics
• Fashion and climate change
• The physics of opera singing
• The Fibonacci sequence in nature and art

Students will have the opportunity to connect with their classmates on a more personal level and find a way of relating to the class material. 

24. Egg drop

SEL skills: Responsible decision making, relationship skills
Materials: Raw eggs, paper, styrofoam, fabric, straws and any other materials you think students might need — bonus points for using recycled materials!

While students of all ages will probably respond well to this activity, there’s nothing that brings a group of teenagers together more than dropping things from high places and seeing what happens. 

Challenge students to build a structure that will support a delicate, uncooked egg when it’s dropped from the top of a ladder (or from the top of a school building, if possible).

They’ll have to work together in teams to build an effective protection for their egg, and use conflict-resolution strategies to work effectively. 

Afterwards, ask students to reflect on how their team worked together. If they weren’t successful, what could they have done differently? If they did succeed, why?

25. Teamwork activities

SEL skills: Relationship skills, social awareness
Materials: Rubric, project supplies

Learning how to effectively work with others is the most important skill high school students can master as they head out into the real world. 

Fortunately, there are many different teaching strategies that emphasize collaboration and cooperation:

• Use cooperative learning to teach students the fundamentals of group work
• Launch project-based learning in your classroom to harness student enthusiasm and encourage a spirit of discovery and cooperation
• Assign service learning projects to show students the benefits of giving back to their community, while also connecting it to in-class lessons

Our amazing team of Prodigy teachers has put together a package of worksheets to help you build social emotional skills with your students. Download yours today!

If you've already seen success with SEL activities, why not try a whole curriculum for your classroom or school? Here are our tips for picking a curriculum that works for you.

Make it work for your school

Can your school handle an entirely new social emotional learning program, or is it something that can be integrated into the existing curriculum?

Depending on your school’s goals and needs, social emotional learning can take different forms:

• School-wide activities that encourage students to practice relevant skills
• Classroom activities like peer discussion circles, conversations and teacher modeling
• Activities integrated with classroom learning, like reflective or persuasive journal writing 

Relevant EdTech tools can also help students develop social emotional skills in different ways. 

• Virtual or augmented reality tools can help stressed students control their emotions
• Online learning activities and communities teach students the importance of teamwork and collaboration
• Game-based learning platforms like Prodigy Math can help students develop a growth mindset in an adaptive and engaging digital world.

Choose the right program for your grade

There’s a big difference between social emotional learning skills in preschool and middle school. Many programs cover all grades, but some focus on age-specific skills. 

Wondering what each age range needs? Here’s what to focus on:

Preschool and kindergarten

Students just entering the classroom need to learn basic social skills like:

• Self-regulation
• Following multi-step directions
• Playing cooperatively with other students
• Listening to the teacher and peers (e.g., conversational turn-taking). 

These skills can be developed through teacher modeling and age-appropriate discussions about emotions.

Elementary school

Guided discussions, read-aloud stories and problem-solving opportunities can teach basic social skills and appropriate classroom behavior. 

The earlier parents and community members get involved, the better. Take-home materials can reinforce social emotional learning activities at home. 

Middle school

Students need to understand how to transition between classes and tackle new academic challenges. Staff should work together to create cohesive strategies for the classroom and extracurricular activities.

Middle school is often a time of changing social dynamics, so focusing on healthy relationships and stress management can also be beneficial.

High school

Subject-specific strategies work best in high school, where students usually work with different teachers every day. 

High school students need to:

• Manage stress
• Build solid relationships
• Prepare for life after school
• Feel like valued members of their communities.

Make it research-backed

Even the most well-intentioned social emotional learning curriculum can fail if it’s not supported by sound pedagogical practices, solid research and clear, actionable goals. 

The same 2011 study that connected academic gains with social emotional learning also created a framework school leaders could use to determine the effectiveness of a social emotional learning program: SAFE.

SAFE stands for Sequenced, Active, Focused and Explicit. When considering a program, ask:

• Does the program contain sequenced activities that teach relevant social emotional skills in ways that connect and build on each other?
• Does the program promote active learning techniques like discussions, modeling or role play?
• Is the program mainly focused on developing one or more social emotional skills relevant to my school’s needs?
• Is the program explicit about targeting specific social emotional skills?

If your program ticks all these boxes, congrats! You’re ready to implement social emotional learning in your school. 

Here are five key steps to help you implement social emotional learning in a responsible, effective way:

1. Talk to your stakeholders

Students don’t just develop social emotional skills in the classroom. They cultivate them in school hallways, the larger community and at home. 

Student development occurs in multiple contexts, and some programs might require you to collaborate with other stakeholders and build connections.

A stakeholder is anyone with an interest in bringing effective social emotional learning to your school, including:

• Parents
• Teachers
• Students
• School and district administrators
• Community members and leaders
• Counsellors and other school staff

Communicate with stakeholders before, during and after implementation to understand their needs, resources, limitations and goals. Get a wide variety of perspectives using:

• Surveys
• Focus groups
• Hands-on demonstrations
• One-on-one conversations

When stakeholders feel like their opinions are taken seriously, they’re more likely to be active partners in social emotional learning. 

2. Define your goals

There’s a good chance you have a school mission statement or school vision. How does social emotional learning help your school reach its goals? Use stakeholder feedback to answer key questions:

• What specific skills do you want your students to build?
• How will social emotional learning address challenges and opportunities in your school?
• What resources do you have to support social emotional learning? What do you need?

Examine your school’s student data on gender, ethnicity, grade level and socioeconomic status to find particular needs that stand out.  Starting with a clear picture of what your school needs is the best way to ensure social emotional learning is effective for every student. 

Plus, every state has its own social emotional learning standards for preschool students, while some have developed standards for early elementary or even through the end of high school. Use them to identify high-priority needs in your school. 

3. Start small

Implementing social emotional learning in your school requires thoughtful planning and implementation in coordination with all your stakeholders. 

Consider starting with a small pilot program. Talk to the teachers you think would be the most receptive to social emotional learning in their classrooms and work with them to create a plan. Then check in frequently, collect regular feedback and adjust your efforts as needed. 

If all goes well, those teachers will become experts who can guide, support and encourage the next group of teachers who join the program.

Don’t try to do everything all at once, and make sure you regularly ask for feedback to assess the effectiveness of your program. 

4. Implementation

Now it’s time to bring social emotional learning to life in your school!

According to researchers at the University of British Columbia, there are eight factors of effective social emotional learning program implementation:

• Fidelity — Was the program delivered as intended?
• Dosage — How much of the program was delivered?
• Quality — How competent and well-trained were the teachers delivering the program?
• Adaptation — Was the program changed in any way?
• Participant engagement — How engaged were students?
• Differentiation — Was the intervention unique, compared to other programs?
• Monitoring of the control condition — What activities took place in the control group while the experimental group received instruction?
• Reach — What portion of eligible students participated in the intervention?

Examining these factors will help you make sure your social emotional learning is effective for your school.

Building a schoolwide initiative around social emotional learning doesn’t happen overnight. 

To make your classroom or school district collaborative for academic learning alongside SEL instruction takes time and patience. But these social emotional learning activities can begin to bridge the gap by pairing academic learning with development of the whole child. 

Students can achieve at a high level while learning maturity, responsibility and self-control, and build toward a positive mental health outlook.

Social emotional learning can go a long way to promoting a better school experience for every student!

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