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This article gives teachers a list of social-emotional learning activities. One activity I really liked was an activity called "Appreciation, apology, aha!" The students would sit in a circle and share something that they appreciate, something they want to apologize for, or a realization they are having. An example would be, " I am sorry for talking to my friend when the teacher was teaching." After the student shares their statement, tell students that if they also feel this way to snap, clap, etc... This shows students that it is nice to show what you are feeling and you can see that your classmates may be feeling the same things! I would absolutely like to utilize this activity within my classroom.

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL)

Build social and emotional skills into any class.

Summit students rip up their stress.

Summit Preparatory Charter High School in Redwood City, California, uses a variety of activities in the weekly, 90-minute Habits, Community, and Culture (HCC) class, where students learn Habits of Success and develop social and emotional learning (SEL) skills. The school has developed an HCC curriculum for grades nine through 12 and hired two full-time teachers for HCC, but Summit's academic teachers also use some of these activities to build SEL skills and deepen their relationships with their students. Cady Ching, a biology and AP environmental science teacher at Summit, incorporates opening activities into all of her classes: "In my freshman classes, we do them every class period."

Visualization to release stress: Have your students imagine what stress looks and feels like inside their body, and then ask them to release it. "The mindfulness practice makes you think the stress is coming off your body," says Geoffrey, a 12th-grade student.

Noise isolation: There are a variety of sounds that your students hear when they're in your classroom, from students walking in the hallway to outdoor construction noise. Have your students focus on one noise and describe it to themselves and recall the last time they interacted with it.

Here are some of the opening, group sharing, and closing activities that teachers use at Summit:

Opening Activities

Summit students practice mindfulness.

2. Name the emotion you're bringing to class: Have each student call out the emotion they're feeling. This helps each student know how they and other students are feeling, what different emotions look like, and how to better interact with their peers based on how they're feeling.

3. Write down, rip up, and throw away your stress: Have your students write down their expectations and insecurities, rip them up, and throw them away. This emotional check-in takes about three minutes. By acknowledging how your students are feeling at the start of each class, you'll acknowledge their barriers to learning and create a safe space for your students to overcome them.

5. Quote of the day: Introduce a quote relevant to what your students are learning or to a shared experience-for example, an act of violence in the community. You can facilitate a whole-class discussion, group students into pairs, or have each student share a one-word response to the quote. This gives students the space to reflect on their beliefs and experiences and whether they agree or disagree with the quote and other students' opinions, and it gives them insight into their peers' perspectives and feelings.

6. Where we came from: Collect baby pictures from your students. Project one baby picture at the start of class, have your students guess who it is, and then have the featured student share something about their childhood.

7. Starting positive: Have each student tape a sheet of paper to their back and then walk around and write positive qualities about their peers on their backs.

8. Motivational moment: Have two students start the class with a three- to five-minute presentation-and come up with two or three discussion questions-based on their interests. The presentation must be related to the course content in a real-world context. "Many students include a video for visuals and increased engagement, but it's optional," says Ching. Have the rest of the class partner up to discuss their questions for one minute and then give them the opportunity to share out to the whole class. This exercise gives your students insight into their peers' interests.

Grades 9-12 | Redwood City, CA

Enrollment

388 | Charter, Suburban

Per Pupil Expenditures

Free / Reduced Lunch

47%

Data is from the 2014-2015 academic year.

Group Sharing

9. Circle sharing: To encourage active listening, create small groups. Have your students position their chairs in a circle so everyone can make eye contact. To strengthen empathy, you can facilitate deeper discussion around what a student shares by asking, "Why did that student share what they did?" or "What perspective is that student coming from?"

When discussing emotionally charged topics, it's important to have guidelines to foster a safe space. Summit uses the Courageous Conversation protocol created by Glenn E. Singleton when discussing race. The protocol is guided by four agreements-stay engaged, experience discomfort, speak your truth, and expect and accept nonclosure. Here is an example of elementary school discussion guidelines from School 21.

Summit students sit in a circle for a whole-class discussion.

10. Write a poem from someone else's perspective. Have your students choose someone they don't know. This helps them to understand that they don't "need to be best friends with someone to empathize with them," explains Ballard.

11. Have a conversation with someone you don't know. Have your students pair up with a student they don't know and provide the pairs with five questions to ask each other. Each student introduces their partner to the class, speaking as if they were their partner, while the rest of the class looks at the student being introduced. "We don't see people sometimes," says Ballard, "and this exercise helps students to see each other more deeply."

12. Play interest and identity-related bingo. Instead of squares filled with numbers or vocabulary words, create cards with information relating to your students. Summit's Bingo cards have things like "'I like to read' or 'I was born in a different country,'" says Armando, a ninth-grade student.

I would like to appreciate Brenda for facilitating the conversation in our small group.

I would like to thank everyone for taking this class seriously.

I apologize to everyone for having my headphones in for half of the time.

Closing Activity

13. Appreciation, apology, aha: Have your students get in a circle and share an appreciation, apology, or realization with the group. Students in Ballard's class have shared things like:

Encourage authentic and timely apologies. Apologizing for something that happened a long time ago has less impact than apologizing for something that happened that day or week. Let your students know that they don't have to name who they're apologizing to when they apologize for what they did.

Help students share helpful, not harmful words. "I often say, 'Appreciations, apologies, and ahas should be something that you genuinely think will be useful for people to hear,'" says Ballard.

Have your students snap, clap, or shake both hands when they hear something that resonates with them. "We snap to let people know that we hear them without exerting our own voice in their narrative," explains Ballard. Students shake their hands when peers share things that are emotionally charged. Ballard often gets this started by saying, "Let's shake it up for that."

"When you pay attention to each other, not only does it build a sense of community, but we're more able to understand other people," says Janet, a 12th-grade student. "If you're able to understand people at a younger age, you could work better with them as adults. That changes how the future generations will be. People can be more accepting, more helpful towards each other."

What makes this a SCHOOL THAT WORKS

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Build social and emotional skills into any class.

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This article explains different exercises and techniques that will help you understand your students better. One exercise I really liked from the article is to have students tell or write about what their goals are. In the elementary level, the question would be asked as, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Most students will have an answer to this. It shows you as the teacher what your students interests are and it can also help you when in the classroom by seeing their work ethics.

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While get-to-know-you activities are typically earmarked for the first weeks of school, they shouldn't end there, say educators and researchers.

Whether it's that they love to play baseball, have three brothers, or enjoy writing or photography, celebrating your students' unique experiences and identities can bolster connections that keep them engaged and performing better in school. Students who have a deeper sense of self- and purpose -are also better able to define their goals and stay focused on pursuing them, concluded a 2014 study from David Yeager, Angela Duckworth, and colleagues.

We collected an array of class exercises from interviews with teachers, online resources, and our archives that will help students develop greater self-awareness and purpose. These insights can also give you a better sense of who they are, so you can be responsive to their interests-even if you're separated by screens or masks.

Reflecting on Experiences: 'Laws of Life' Essays

In the early 2000s, educators in an urban, high-poverty district in New Jersey gave their middle and high school students an interesting essay assignment: Write about the values and principles that guide your life.

The seemingly small activity, called "Laws of Life," is based on the work of philanthropist John Templeton, and it turned into a much bigger project that helped students develop a stronger sense of self, purpose, and possibility for the future, according to Maurice Elias, a psychology professor at Rutgers University. The project has since been replicated all over the world.

To run the assignment in your class, Elias recommends asking students to reflect on their past-in and out of school-and the experiences and people that made them who they are. From there, have students discern key characteristics that have influenced their lives and then craft an essay-or create a video or other multimedia content-focused on the "laws" or principles that drive them.

Question prompts like "Who do you admire? List three of their admirable traits" and "Describe an incident or event from which you learned a lesson 'the hard way'" can help guide students. Periodically throughout the year, have students refer back to their essays to reflect on what they wrote and ask themselves, "What's changed?" and "What's stayed the same?"

Exploring Identity-and Perceptions About It: Identity Charts

To get to know her students and ensure that they felt seen in her classroom, middle school teacher Shana White created a lesson to help them explore their identities. First, White set a foundation for discussion by defining identity and explaining how identities can sometimes be visible, like age, or invisible, like a person's life experiences.

Then, with the permission of six of her friends, White shared photos of their faces and had students guess their "identity characteristics." Afterward, she revealed the true details and led a class discussion about making assumptions about others based on how they look or act. To finish the project, students drew their own "identity portraits" or a picture of their face with half the face showing visible characteristics and the other half showing invisible characteristics.
Courtesy of Shana White
The education organization Facing History and Ourselves recommends a similar exercise called the "Who am I?" activity for middle school students. To start, select some key historical figures or fictional characters-think inclusively and avoid stereotypes, selecting a wide range of people from different backgrounds-and ask students to discuss "factors such as religion, gender, and geography" that influenced their identities.

Next, have students read the chapter "My Name" from the book The House on Mango Street, where the main character, Esperanza, talks about her name, revealing details about her culture. Ask students to create an identity chart for Esperanza, answering questions such as "What is her family like?" and "What does her name reveal about her personality?" Guided by the reading, students can then create identity charts for themselves and share them with the class.

Learning Important Details: Student Inventories

Student inventories can help teachers quickly discern details and facts about students that shape who they are, and can be used to plan further class activities and lessons. Ask students to list their favorite musicians, songs, sports, activities, games, or food, for example, or probe deeper with questions about their culture, memories, and family.

Another option is having students write 20 sentences that complete the prompt, "I am someone who..." or asking a short list of thought-provoking questions in one-to-one Hopes and Dreams conferences. Target questions that tap into who students are now and who they hope to be, such as "What are some things that bug you about the world?" "What inspires you?" and "What dreams do you have after high school?"

Look for patterns in student responses, and use what you learn to make classroom lessons and activities connected to students' interests, advises Rebecca Alber, an education professor in California, who says, "Students need to see connections between learning and their lived experiences."

Understanding Interests: Passion Blogging

In Allison Berryhill's high school English class, literary analysis exercises left her students "frozen," and free-writing assignments produced hard-to-read rants. Influenced by the book Beyond Literary Analysis, Berryhill started offering a new exercise called "passion blogging" last year, in which students write about topics that interest them.
Courtesy of Allison Berryhill
Students start by drawing "heart maps," or large hearts filled with illustrations and words that represent their passions. Then, they select one or two topics to explore further and look for related articles, images, and videos. Berryhill also gives accompanying class lessons on attribution of sources, texts, quotes, and imagery, and shares mentor texts to guide students' writing.

Students' blogs have run the gamut in subject matter, from pheasant hunting to hunger strikes to hiking, and give them an opportunity to dive deeply into things they care about. As part of the process, students are also tasked with reading and evaluating several of their classmates' blogs. Overall, the low-stakes activity has served as a springboard to build students' literary analysis skills for harder assignments, says Berryhill, while helping her get to know them better.

Documenting Your Life: Movies, Photos, and Podcasts

Though many teachers and students are feeling virtual brain drain, digital tools can provide new, creative outlets for students to share and define their interests and personalities. Teachers are having students create autobiographical mini-movies or trailers about their lives and produce podcasts or write articles for digital school newspapers on issues they care about.

Influenced by her community's experiences during the pandemic, Wendy McElfish, a high school teacher in California, taught a lesson on Dorothea Lange's famous black-and-white photography from the Great Depression. Then, she had her students take their own photos with phones to document their lives. She guided them with the themes "life outside your door," "through a window," "different life inside," and "porch photos of your family."

"When kids are faced with terrible circumstances, sometimes it helps to take an artistic approach," she said. "A lot of kids aren't good writers, but they have an eye and they have a voice... [and] they can show the world what I see."

Similarly, Lori Wenzinger, a middle school social studies teacher in South Carolina, paired up with a local photographer to create a three-week multimedia project called "Finding Your Joy." After the photographer taught two classes on photo composition and mood, students were tasked with taking photos that "capture joyful moments throughout their day," sharing and reviewing them as a class, and selecting their three favorites to keep in the class Google Drive.

Having Fun: Icebreakers, Games, and Accolades
Courtesy of Cathleen Beachboard
In addition to more comprehensive assignments and lessons, teachers can build in short, entertaining activities that keep students engaged and reveal insights about who they are.

Trevor Boffone, a high school teacher in Texas, asked his students to submit their favorite song to a list at the start of the year. Now, at the beginning of each virtual class, he plays music to kick things off, incorporating students' picks and his own.

Throughout remote learning, Cathleen Beachboard, a middle school teacher in Virginia, says she's including fun activities like show-and-tells and theme days. This fall, she also adopted a practice that her superintendent uses for staff meetings called "Three Cool Things I've Seen." Once a week, Beachboard calls out three things she's observed about students from classes that week that recognize them for their individuality.

"I know a lot of teachers are struggling right now getting students pulled in. I found the more encouragement and authentic praise we give to students, the more they dive in," she said. "These are scary times, but by giving students time to showcase their individuality, they will feel safe and ready to fully engage in learning."

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6 Exercises to Get to Know Your Students Better-and Increase Their Engagement

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Celebrating your middle and high school students' unique identities can bolster connections and improve performance in school.

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Greeting students at the door sets the tone for the day. It is important that students see that you are there and ready to start the day. Giving students a high five or just a simple smile can change their whole mood. This article shows a study of how welcoming students in the morning makes them more focused and less disruptive during the day!

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Greeting each student at the door with a positive message brings benefits for both students and teacher, according to a study.

A widely cited 2007 study claimed that teachers greeting students at the classroom door led to a 27 percentage point increase in academic engagement. The problem? It included just three students.

Now a new, much larger and more credible study -comprising 203 students in 10 classrooms-validates that claim: Greeting students at the door sets a positive tone and can increase engagement and reduce disruptive behavior. Spending a few moments welcoming students promotes a sense of belonging, giving them social and emotional support that helps them feel invested in their learning.

The first few minutes of class are often the most chaotic, as students transition from busy areas such as the hallway or playground. Left unchecked, disruptions can become difficult to manage, but a proactive approach to classroom management can help students get focused and ready to learn. Rather than address disruptive behavior as it happens, proactive techniques-like greeting students at the door and modeling good behavior-reduce the occurrence of such behavior as teachers and students build a positive classroom culture together.

In the study, when teachers started class by welcoming students at the door, academic engagement increased by 20 percentage points and disruptive behavior decreased by 9 percentage points-potentially adding "an additional hour of engagement over the course of a five-hour instructional day," according to the researchers.

Ten middle school teachers were randomly assigned by the researchers to one of two groups. The first group started class by greeting their students at the door, saying each student's name while using a nonverbal greeting such as a handshake or nod. The teachers also used precorrective statements -reminders of what to do at the start of class like, "Spend the next few minutes reviewing what we covered yesterday." If a student had struggled with their behavior the previous day, the teachers often gave a positive message to encourage them to improve.

Teachers in the second group attended classroom management training sessions offered by their schools, but they weren't given any specific instructions on how to start class.

Researchers observed classrooms in the fall and spring, looking at academic engagement-how attentive students were to their teacher or classwork-and disruptive behavior, including speaking out of turn, leaving one's seat, and distracting classmates. Both measures improved in classrooms where teachers greeted their students, confirming what many teachers already know: Meeting students' emotional needs is just as important as meeting their academic needs.

"The results from this study suggest that teachers who spend time on the front end to implement strategies such as the PGD [positive greetings at the door] will eventually save more time on the back end by spending less time reacting to problem behavior and more time on instruction," the study authors write.

Building Community

Why do positive greetings work? When teachers use strategies like this, they help "establish a positive classroom climate in which students feel a sense of connection and belonging," the study authors write. "This is particularly important considering the research demonstrating that achievement motivation is often a by-product of social belonging." In other words, when students feel welcome in the classroom, they're more willing to put time and effort into learning.

Nonverbal interpersonal interactions, such as a friendly handshake or a thumbs-up, can help make greetings feel authentic and build trust -as long as students feel comfortable with physical contact.

Say the student's name

Make eye contact

Use a friendly nonverbal greeting, such as a handshake, high five, or thumbs-up

Give a few words of encouragement

Ask how their day is going

When greeting students at your door:

Addressing Underlying Causes of Misbehavior

Disruptive behavior is contagious-if one student misbehaves, it can quickly spread to other students. And while most teachers try to respond immediately, punishment often backfires. Research shows that trying to fix student misbehavior may be futile because doing so can spur resistance and more misbehavior instead of compliance.

"Despite overwhelming evidence that such strategies are ineffective, many teachers rely on reactive methods for classroom behavior management," explain the study authors.

So instead of asking, "How can I fix misbehavior?" teachers could ask, "How can I create a classroom environment that discourages misbehavior in the first place?" In many cases, low-level disruptions and disengagement have less to do with the student and more to do with factors that the teacher can control, such as teaching style and use of stimulating activities. For example, a study found that when teachers encouraged students to participate in classroom activities rather than lecturing to them, students were more likely to stay on task.

Another recent study provides additional insights: When teachers focused their attention on students' positive conduct and avoided rushing to correct minor disruptions, students had better behavior, and their mental health and ability to concentrate also improved.

Benefits for Teachers, Too

A welcoming classroom environment doesn't benefit students alone-it can improve the teacher's mental health as well. Slightly more than half of teachers- 53 percent-feel stressed by student disengagement or disruptions. The consequences can be serious: A 2014 study found that "teachers report classroom management to be one of the greatest concerns in their teaching, often leading to burnout, job dissatisfaction, and early exit from the profession."

All too often, teachers spend time and energy responding to misbehavior with corrective discipline, such as telling students to stop talking or giving them a time-out. These may work in the short term, but they can damage teacher-student relationships while doing little to prevent future misbehavior. Research shows that it can be beneficial for student and teacher well-being to instead focus on creating a positive classroom environment.

The takeaway: Starting class by greeting your students at the door helps set a positive tone for the rest of the day, promoting their sense of belonging, boosting their academic engagement, and reducing disruptive behavior.

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Greeting each student at the door with a positive message brings benefits for both students and teacher.

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The first step is to write down your thoughts on a piece of paper without your name on it. The second step is to crumble the piece of paper and have a snowball fight with the balls of paper. Afterwards, everyone finds a crumbled up paper and reads what their peers are stressed about. This is a great interactive and hands on strategy to show your students that they are not alone. It creates awareness of stress and depression!

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Every time a student does something nice or helps someone they are able to put a pom-pom in the jar. The teacher will ask students what it was that they did to be able to do that. It is a visual way for students to see that helping others is fun and a positive thing! I would love to utilize this in my own classroom!

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Teachers at the beginning of every school year gather and make a list of all students within the school district. Then each individual teacher will put a check mark if they know the students name, face, and a personal story about them. This allows the teachers to see just how much they know about their students. When everyone is done checking the list, teachers will figure out who they need to get to know better. This strategy is amazing and will make every student feel wanted by someone in the school!

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Students are assigned a "buddy" who is not their teacher. At the beginning and end of everyday, they meet with their buddy for 2 minutes. The staff identifies students are struggling to meet their educational needs and will just sit and talk with them. This allows the student to open up and be able to say what is on their mind. The child gets the satisfaction of knowing that someone is excited to see them in the morning and at the end of the day. I think utilizing this in whatever school I am at as a teacher will be super beneficial!

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Check-In / Check-Out: Providing a Daily Support System for Students

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Students can get an immediate confidence boost when they feel that their teachers believe in them. It is important as a teacher to remember that all of your students want you to believe in them. Showing them praise, even if they are giving a bit of effort, will help them be more focused and they will want to do better! As teachers, I think we always see the negative first and then the positive. We need to be more focused on the improvements they are making rather than all of the mistakes!

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In addition to improving relationships, praise from teachers can boost students' confidence and self-esteem.

Praise is a powerful expression of gratitude that can nurture relationships, improve well-being, and activate learning. Being intentional in how we use praise versus corrections/constructive feedback can make all the difference (both personally and professionally).

Here's a thought exercise I offer in the book Evolving with Gratitude: "Think about a learning environment that you have been in recently. It can be your own classroom or one that you visited as an instructional coach, administrator, etc. Scan the space, and see all of those wonderful faces. Think about all the things you can thank them for: actively engaging in learning, offering a warm smile, helping others, and so much more. You continue scanning the room, and then you get to that one kid. This kid challenges you. Maybe they can't sit still, they can't stop talking, they show up late, they don't turn in assignments, or all of the above."

Behavior is communication, and what if this individual needs your praise more than you can imagine? What if this is someone who really needs to feel seen, heard, and genuinely appreciated? Often, the kids (and adults) who challenge us the most are the ones who need us the most.

Earning my psychology degree, I was taught that we should acknowledge positive behavior six times more than we acknowledge negative behavior. That's a lot of positive reinforcement! Experts don't always agree on the exact ratio, but regardless of the context- business, romantic relationships, or learning communities -experts do agree that we want to overwhelmingly spotlight the good. So, why don't we do this naturally?

BARRIERS TO OFFERING MORE PRAISE

We have negativity bias. As humans, we are wired with a negativity bias, meaning that even in the best of times, we notice the negative exponentially more than the positive. Considered an adaptive evolutionary function, negativity bias served a critical purpose thousands of years ago, helping our ancestors make choices to survive. Negative emotions also serve a purpose and can help keep us safe, but negativity bias can have us overwhelmingly focused on the negative in unproductive ways.

We have a tendency to miss the quiet people among us. What about those who keep their heads down and are (sadly) easy to overlook? When we gather in groups, there are often people (kids and adults) who tend to fly under the radar. They don't cause a problem, and they quietly go about their business (even though they have plenty to offer to others). How often do they hear their names called? How often do these individuals feel seen, heard, and genuinely appreciated?

Our jobs involve helping others improve. Another thing that could be holding us back is something that I consider an occupational hazard. Given our profound role as educators, we are dedicated to continuous improvement. No matter what our role is, teacher, principal, or superintendent, we want everything to be the best it can be, so naturally, with the best of intentions, we want to point out room for improvement.

As tempting as it is to share every opportunity for growth, it's important to remember that a little constructive feedback can go a long way, and positive feedback is what motivates us to continue to improve. Easier said than done. Even when we are being intentional about seeing the good in others, it can be tough, but we all have strengths. Shining a light on those strengths and doing it often can make all the difference.

TIPS FOR HIGHLIGHTING THE POSITIVES AND PROMOTING GROWTH

So what would this look like for academics? Let's look at writing as an example. Raise your hand if you can remember being a student and getting a piece of your writing returned with massive mark-ups, possibly even in the dreaded red marker! Here are some tips you may want to try:

Teach everyone the importance of positive feedback. Don't keep it a secret, model it, and gently hold each other accountable (kids and adults).

Teach learners to give peer feedback, both positive and constructive. Use rubrics, checklists, and sentence stems so that everyone can provide timely, high-quality feedback.

Leverage a workshop model to celebrate successes in the moment and give real-time feedback.

Don't correct everything. (I know-yikes!) Instead, provide targeted, actionable feedback on what's most important for the current learning goal(s). Bonus: Once high-quality peer review is in place, fellow learners tend to catch mistakes, which saves us time.

Is focusing on the good easy? For most, myself included, no, at least not at first. Is this highly effective and worth it? Absolutely!

If increasing praise for your entire class or team seems overwhelming, start small and build up to it. Pick one person who is struggling or goes unnoticed, and focus on acknowledging their successes more (social behavior and academic performance). There is no one way to do this, which is why this is an art informed by science.

Note to self: Be aware of unconscious negatives. Yes, nasty glare and eye rolling, I'm talking about you.

Honestly, are all the relationships in my life perfect all the time? No! But being intentional in focusing on authentic, heartfelt, and specific positive feedback has improved every relationship in my life. And when things get tough, personally or professionally, I remind myself, the best way to change someone else's behavior is to change my own behavior first.

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The Art (and Science) of Using Praise for Improvement

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In addition to improving relationships, praise from teachers can boost students' confidence and self-esteem. Praise is a powerful expression of gratitude that can nurture relationships, improve well-being, and activate learning. Being intentional in how we use praise versus corrections/constructive feedback can make all the difference (both personally and professionally).

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This article explores an activity where students can anonymously compliment their classmates! It encourages positivity within the classroom. This is also used by staff members as well as students. It shows students that you are kind to everyone and that 1 compliment can really change a person's life.

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Administration & Leadership

A project that invites students to anonymously compliment their classmates and teachers has improved the culture at one high school.

A small act of kindness can change the complexion of someone's day. Giving someone a compliment, telling them how much they mean to you, or just sharing words of encouragement can change a person's overall outlook.

For the past six years, staff and students at Wayne Valley High School in New Jersey have participated in an activity known as Third Party Compliments. Each year, we share between 2,500 and 3,000 anonymous messages of kindness and positivity throughout our school community.

Positivity and Encouragement

I got the idea for this from an icebreaker introduced to me by my brother-in-law. Three people are separated from a group. They're kept isolated from one another and brought back in one at a time. They're blindfolded and handed 10 pennies to throw into a garbage can. For the first person, no one speaks while they throw the pennies. For the second person, the crowd mocks them during the task, and for the third person, the crowd offers encouragement.

You can probably guess that the last person performs the task best, but what may surprise you is that whenever I do this activity, the person who receives no feedback always performs at the same level as the person who received negative feedback. This activity provides evidence of the power of positivity and encouragement.

We tap into that at my school through our compliment project, which is one of several social and emotional learning activities we do. The process begins with staff and students using a Google Form to submit compliments and positive messages for anyone within our school community. The link to the form is posted on social media, emailed to staff and students, posted on Google Classroom, and also made available through QR codes posted around the building.

The form is set to only accept responses from emails within our school's domain and to collect the respondents' email addresses. It's important that we know who submitted the message for safety reasons. Over the course of a three-week period, our goal is to give everyone as many opportunities to submit their messages of positivity as possible.

After all the messages are collected, we give ourselves two weeks to sort, organize, and prepare the messages to be delivered to our school community. There's an intentional focus on detail to ensure that every student and staff member receives a message.

This part is a little tricky, but with some creative sorting using Google Sheets, it can be done. Autocrat, an add-on to Sheets, is a mail merging tool that pulls the data from the various columns in Sheets and adds them to a template. Once the merge happens, each of the messages will be added to the template in a Google Doc. Now comes the manual labor! Lots of cutting and organizing.

Once the messages are ready to be shared, they are organized into two groups. The main bulk of the messages are distributed through physical education class in batches over the course of the week. During the sorting process, around 100 messages are identified to be hand-delivered. These messages are selected because they are particularly heartfelt and impactful while also highlighting students and staff who may not typically get noticed or recognized.

A Team Effort

Students, administrators, counselors, and teachers participate in walking around to distribute these messages. Students are asked to come to the hallway to read their compliment, and the messages are read to staff members in front of their students. Our TV students capture the authentic reactions to the messages and compile them into a video.

The process of collecting, sorting, organizing, and distributing the messages requires a great deal of commitment from a lot of people. We have had counselors, administrative assistants, and students help with the process. I can truly say that seeing the reactions of the people receiving the messages is priceless and worth every minute of energy required.

Mother Theresa said that kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. Although the process can be time-consuming, the impact that this program has had on our school climate has been undeniable. Staff and students consistently share with me that this is their favorite activity of the year. The pure joy and happiness in the responses of everyone reading their messages makes all the work of putting this activity together worth it.

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Administration & Leadership A project that invites students to anonymously compliment their classmates and teachers has improved the culture at one high school. A small act of kindness can change the complexion of someone's day. Giving someone a compliment, telling them how much they mean to you, or just sharing words of encouragement can change a person's overall outlook.

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This article explains the different SEL activities that you can use in your classroom. SEL is really important to me and from my observations in elementary schools, it is something that I would like to use in my classroom. This article names a few different activities that target SEL that can be used in the classroom for grades K-4!

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL)

Not all challenges can be solved, but an activity that helps students identify their support systems and coping strategies can boost their well-being.

How can I help my students thrive and reach their fullest potential? Can I help my students improve their mental health and behavior? These and related inquiries fill our minds as educators dedicated to supporting our students. Yet the answers are often elusive, especially in recent years, when critical factors such as trauma, inequity, and the challenges of virtual or hybrid teaching have filled our learning environments.

The effects of the pandemic have taken a toll on students and teachers alike, with anxiety, stress, and fear imbuing our personal lives and school settings. We wonder, what can we do about it? Are teachers really equipped to recognize students' feelings and cope with unprecedented situations?

Across the United States, school districts are incorporating mindfulness and social and emotional learning (SEL) programming into their curricula. These programs focus on students' mental well-being, but not all schools have access to them, and not all programs teach equitable strategies.

So what can elementary teachers do if their district does not incorporate these programs? For starters, infusing children's literature that centers a breadth of attitudes, feelings, and mindsets into the curriculum can provide support when students are facing troubling situations within and outside of the classroom. After reading and discussing literature that facilitates considerations of emotion, children can then apply what they have learned by doing extension activities that support self-awareness.

Here's one example that we have utilized with kindergarten and first-grade classes-and that could apply to learners through fourth grade.

Using Literature to Facilitate Discussions About Emotion

Adam Lehrhaupt's children's book There Was a Holeis a resource that can help students understand their feelings. The text focuses on self-awareness, self-management, and responsible decision-making-three tenets of social and emotional learning as defined by CASEL.

The main character, Lily, has a hole in her chest that cannot be filled. No amount of cake, museum visits, or soccer can fix the pain she feels. Lily meets a friend who teaches her how to make patches. The patches may not completely fix the pain, but they do make Lily feel better. They are metaphorical displays of healing; the act of crafting serves as a form of self-regulation, and the completed patches facilitate opportunities to make social connections and discover joy in shared areas of interest.

Lily's journey positions students and teachers to have class discussions about difficult emotions, the power of friendship during challenging times, and constructive coping skills that can "patch" if not completely fix pain.

To further build upon students' emotional literacy, teachers can follow reading and discussion with an extension activity, the Healing Hand, which focuses on finding the good, even in a bad situation.

The Healing Hand: An Extension Activity

For this activity, students can either trace their hand or use a hand template. In the middle of the outlined hand, invite students to write stressors and challenges (for younger students, or as a way to differentiate learning, students may dictate to a trusted adult-a teacher or school counselor-who acts as a scribe). Let them know they will have full control over who sees their completed diagrams.

On each finger, ask students to brainstorm ways to cope with their identified challenges, creating a visual representation of adaptation. Not every challenge, for example, has a solution, so the goal here is not to imply an easy fix in the face of stress but to encourage students to become aware of possible support systems and to foster a sense of agency amid trying circumstances.

To further reinforce the sense of a support system, you can welcome guidance counselors or other school support staff into the classroom to talk about coping strategies and resources that exist at school and to offer support to students whose challenges may raise concern. This is a great way to normalize help-seeking, familiarize students with caring adults in the building, and support students' sharing.

After students have completed their diagrams, you can scaffold optional sharing by inviting students to choose whether they keep their hand diagrams to themselves, share confidentially with you or a counselor, or share with trusted peer(s) or the larger group.

Doing so facilitates reflection, and students are able to connect on a deeper level with their peers while developing their empathy skills. They can discuss similarities between their challenges and support systems. And those comfortable with having a wider audience might post their Healing Hands in a designated area, such as a calm-down corner, for visual reminders about identified coping strategies.

When displaying the hands, consider arranging them in a way that they are interconnected. This symbolizes the importance of relationships and support systems and shows students that they are never alone. If students are uncomfortable with their hands being displayed publicly, consider laminating them to keep in a desk, folder, or safe space so that the students can reflect privately during a challenging time.

Bridging Connection and Boosting Sense of Future

Students are facing many challenges-anxiety, worry, and fear among them-but they don't always express these feelings verbally. The Healing Hand activity offers a way for students to share their worries and fears while identifying the support systems available in their lives.

Healing Hands can serve as visual reminders that there are always resources available in times of challenge. They can serve as a bridge for students who might benefit from building relationships with school counselors or other support staff. And by incorporating SEL activities into the classroom, teachers can help students learn how to build confidence and resilience for their future.

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Support Emotional Literacy With the Healing Hand Activity

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Social & Emotional Learning (SEL) Not all challenges can be solved, but an activity that helps students identify their support systems and coping strategies can boost their well-being. How can I help my students thrive and reach their fullest potential? Can I help my students improve their mental health and behavior?