School is weird these days. With masks, uncertainties, mandates, and social distancing, social emotional learning is at the forefront. Our students need these explicit lessons! With all of the academic curriculum and skills we have to cover, social emotional learning can be hard to target. Here are six daily SEL practices to try that won’t break the bank, take over your day, or require extensive prepping.
Morning Meeting
Morning meeting is easily one of my favorite daily SEL practices. It’s a connection point, a joyful shared experience, builds community, and gets the day going. Morning meeting doesn’t need to take more than 15-20 minutes and can be a really nice way to begin a full, busy day with kids. I love that it’s so easily differentiated by grade and ability level. If you’re looking for a simple plug-and-go morning meeting resource, check out this product for K-2 and this product for 3-5!
SEL Yes/No Questions
This is such a fun activity to have on hand for K-8 grade. It’s hard to find a resource that could span such a wide age range, but this is it. I like projecting these and using them during transition times! This can even be used virtually, as students just need to put their thumbs up or down. An extension could be students chatting with table groups or elbow partners about their answers.
Positive Affirmations
I believe these are a MUST in every classroom. I have seen many teachers use positive affirmations as a reactionary response to a student going through a struggle or exhibiting low self esteem. While this can be a helpful way to use affirmations, they are also great daily SEL practices for ALL students. I love using these coloring sheets and these alphabet cards to teach positive affirmations class-wide.
Breathing Boards
Another skill that is often seen used as a Tier 2 strategy is controlled breathing exercises. What if we taught these to ALL kids? There are so many fun ways to teach breathing exercises, from meditation scripts to You Tube videos. I also like using breathing boards because they are simple, structured, and can be taught in a very short amount of time. Then, these tools can be made available across the school day and students have already been introduced to them! Win/win.
SEL Early Finisher Choice Boards
When it comes to early finisher activities, I am all about the choice boards. Adding in more work or giving an assignment as a response to finishing work early just seems counterintuitive to me. Using this time as an opportunity to plug in daily SEL practices seems like the way to go. I like using these SEL monthly early finisher choice boards because they really promote student autonomy and require very little prep and material collection from the teacher.
Daily SEL Journal
SEL journals for the win! These journals were designed to be simple, accessible, extremely low prep, and high quality. I have seen teachers add journal time in as a mindfulness choice after returning from lunch, as a mid-day daily SEL practice while eating a snack, or as a morning bell ringer. There are 100 pages and they’re really streamlined and simple to implement. The journals promote reflection, organization, emotion identification, self-management, flexible thinking, and more!
Read Alouds
Books are such a gift, and ones with SEL themes? Count me in. I am sure you can think of hundreds of titles of gorgeous board, picture, and chapter books that tackle important social emotional learning themes. I have a round-up of books here if you’re interested. There is NEVER a wrong time for a read aloud at school!
Daily SEL Practices are Essential!
What would you add?
