What Activities Can You Use To Teach SEL?
Posted on: 27 April 2021
Social emotional learning, or SEL, is an important component in allowing children to build essential skills they need to blossom into socially and emotionally intelligent adults. Of course, this may not happen naturally. You may need to take some additional steps to help children build these skills.
These are some of the useful activities you might use to teach SEL.
Visualizations
Visualizations and imagery help build mindfulness. You can spend five to ten minutes focusing on an image that students will visualize. You will help them walk through the scene, and you can ask if anybody wants to share after the session is over. This will help students learn some self-awareness and management.
Respond to Quotes
Every day, you can write a quote from somebody notable on the board. Ask your students to respond to the quote, talking about what they think it means or what the quoted author might be trying to say. This helps students empathize or relate to the words of another person.
Naming Positive Qualities
Often, students need help learning how to compliment each other. It can be a positive experience for students to list positive qualities about each other. This builds emotional intelligence and promotes showing students how to speak positively with each other.
Group Sharing
Sometimes, students want to share with each other or get peer advice without knowing how to do this. You might set up sessions for group sharing where students can share what is happening in their lives and how they are feeling. This promotes empathy and communication skills.
Conversations With Classmates
Often, students only talk to their closest friends. You can pair classmates at random, encouraging them to speak with each other and get to know classmates from a different perspective. Communication skills are often built in these vulnerable moments.
Show Appreciation
At the end of a class session, you might ask students to stand up and show appreciation for something somebody did in class that day. For example, one student might praise another for being brave enough to share a story with the class. Another student might show appreciation for a student who chose to read aloud.
Social emotional learning is important for helping children and young adults become stronger with time. These activities are just the beginning. SEL lesson plans can provide you with more tasks you can use to help children build these necessary skills.
Contact a local education professional to learn more about SEL lesson plans.
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