# data[].attributes.body
Let's share resources related to enhancing this competency under this theme 😊!

# data[].attributes.body
Let's share resources related to enhancing this competency under this theme!

# data[].attributes.body
Let's share resources related to enhancing this competency under this theme 😊!

# data[].attributes.body
SEL Mini Posters. PDF

# data[].attributes.body
SEL Activities, Materials, and Resources for Grades K–5

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Free Resources for Elementary | Second Step

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Explore our free activities for elementary school, plus additional materials and resources for grades K-5.

# data[].attributes.body
How Can Sentence Stems Help Children Develop A Growth Mindset?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
by Terry Heick

I'm a passionate proponent of sentence stems.

The biggest benefit of using sentence stems is the way it models the language, tone, and cognitive patterns native to certain activities. If you ask a student to summarize the plot of a story, there are many tasks embedded in that request, from recalling, analyzing, and distilling the story, to articulating it in a way that satisfies both their understanding of the story as well as any specific requests from you.

By offering a sentence stem-in this case, something like, 'The plot is mostly about ______.' You can then follow up with, "The plot is mostly about _______ but the real lesson is ______,' or 'The most important scene is _______ because _______', etc.

(That is also somewhat how strategies like 'Somebody Wanted But So' works-as a kind of template for students to 'fill in,' which itself functions similarly to multiple-choice questions compared to essay or open response, for example.)

In 26 Sentence Stems For Higher-Level Conversation In The Classroom, I offered ways to scaffold critical discussions. Below, I offer something similar but to help students develop a growth mindset-and mindsets related to it.

See also 25 Ways To Promote A Growth Mindset In Students

Creative Thinking Sentence Stems

I can use________ in a new way so that________.

_____ is an opportunity to use ______.

One pattern I notice about problem-solving is________.

Complexity usually requires thinkers to _______.

Self-Knowledge Sentence Stems

When I see other people struggle and/or fail, I think________.

My________ has changed over time because________.

How I see myself is mostly determined by________.

I usually learn _______ by _______.

I most successful when I________.

I know this is my best because________.

This is worth doing or knowing to me personally because ________.

Working with others affects my learning by ______.

Group work can be great but when ______ I prefer _______.

Persistence Sentence Stems

'Effort' is its own kind of 'smart' because ________.

This confusing, but _______.

Since learning is a process rather than a single event, I know that________.

So far I've found ____ ways that don't work.

The last time I faced a challenge like this, I _______.

When I'm confused, I usually________ but I also could consider _____.

I can't let this stop me because _______.

I haven't tried _______.

If I start over at the beginning, it might ______ but also could ______.

Here is a list of all of the people who haven't failed (again and again): _______. [Obviously rhetorical. : )]

One lesson I can take from this for the future is ________.

I've tried _______ and _______, but I haven't tried _______.

For this to work, I'm going to have to _______.

Reflection & Metacognition Sentence Stems

The difference between feedback and criticism is _______.

When I'm frustrated, my thinking _______.

If I changed my thinking about _______ then _______.

While I _______, I noticed that I _______.

When I approach situations like this, I tend to ______.

The personality trait of mine that tends to be most useful to me when I am challenged is ________.

Collaboration Sentence Stems

I can learn ________ by watching others which can help me because _______.

When I see other people struggle with something like this, they sometimes________.

Working with ______ has changed _______ by ________.

By working with ______, I night be able to _______.

Without collaborating with ______, I would not have been able to _______.

I need others when _______ because ________.

Positive Thinking Sentence Stems

While it's true that _______, the upside is that _______.

In the past, I've struggled with _______ but _______.

This an opportunity for me to _______.

I might not be able to _______ but I can _______.

Challenging circumstances improve me by _______.

My strength comes from _______.

The last time something like this happened and I was hurt, worried, or confused, it turned out that ________.

I know things are going to turn out okay because _______.

Things didn't turn out the way I hoped this time, but next time _______.

Feeling sorry for myself helps me by _______. (Ironic/sarcastic-obviously use in the right circumstance).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
25 Sentence Stems To Help Children Develop A Growth Mindset - TeachThought

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Help students develop a growth mindset with these sentence stems, categorized by collaboration, creativity, and other SEL pillars.

# data[].attributes.body
List of Emotions Expression Words

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Categories of Emotions

The list of emotions a typical pre-K child understands may be limited to happy, mad, sad, and scared ( Harter, S., & Buddin, B. J.), but as they grow, the list expands, and they develop a more nuanced vocabulary to explain how they feel.

Over the past 40 years, several frameworks have emerged to describe and categorize emotions. There is the Plutchik Wheel of Emotions, Ekmans' Atlas of Emotions, and many others, but for this article, we are sharing a tree-like framework created by Dr. Phillip Shaver and his colleagues at the University of Denver.

In 1987, Shaver and his colleagues published Emotion Knowledge: Further Exploration of a Prototype Approach where they outlined a three-level hierarchy of emotions and categorized words within that hierarchy. In the paper, they identifed six primary emotions: Anger, Fear, Joy, Love, Sadness, and Surprise - And they identifed 25 secondary emotions and 135 words that represent more descriptive tertiary emotions.

Here is the complete list of emotions and how they are categorized:

1. Anger

Disgust: Contempt, disgust, revulsion

Envy: Envy, jealousy

Exasperation: Exasperation, frustration

Irritation: Aggravation, agitation, annoyance, grouchiness, grumpiness, irritation

Rage: Anger, bitterness, dislike, ferocity, fury, hate, hostility, loathing, outrage, rage, resentment, scorn, spite, vengefulness, wrath

Torment: Torment

2. Fear

Horror: Alarm, fear, fright, horror, hysteria, mortification, panic, shock, terror

Nervousness: Anxiety, apprehension, distress, dread, nervousness, tenseness, uneasiness, worry

3. Joy

Cheerfulness: Amusement, bliss, cheerfulness, delight, ecstasy, elation, enjoyment, euphoria, gaiety, gladness, glee, happiness, jolliness, joviality, joy, jubilation, satisfaction

Contentment: Contentment, pleasure

Enthrallment: Enthrallment, rapture

Optimism: Eagerness, hope, optimism

Pride: Pride, triumph

Relief: Relief

Zest: Enthusiasm, excitement, exhilaration, thrill, zeal, zest

4. Love

Affection: Adoration, affection, attraction, caring, compassion, fondness, liking, love, sentimentality, tenderness

Longing: Longing

Lust: Arousal, desire, infatuation, lust, passion

5. Sadness

Disappointment: Disappointment, dismay, displeasure

Neglect: Alienation, defeat, dejection, embarrassment, homesickness, humiliation, insecurity, isolation, insult, loneliness, neglect, rejection

Sadness: Depression, despair, gloom, glumness, grief, hopelessness, melancholy, misery, sadness, sorrow, unhappiness, woe

Shame: Guilt, regret, remorse, shame

Suffering: Agony, anguish, hurt, suffering

Sympathy: Pity, sympathy

6. Surprise
Surprise: Amazement, astonishment, surprise

Teaching Emotional Literacy

Featured Lessons

To assist you as you help students understand emotions, we have created a series of lessons, worksheets, and printables. Many of these include characters from our online SEL games; however you aren't required to use the online programs in order to use the lessons.

Additional Emotional Literacy Lessons and Activities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
List of Emotions: 135 Words that Express Feelings

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The list of emotions a typical pre-K child understands may be limited to happy, mad, sad, and scared ( Harter, S., & Buddin, B. J.), but as they grow, the list expands, and they develop a more nuanced vocabulary to explain how they feel.

# data[].attributes.body
SEL Activities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Welcome to our supplemental Social Emotional Learning Activities page!

As you will see below, many of the supplemental SEL activities and lesson plans include characters from our game-based, social emotional learning interventions. And when you use the online programs with your students, these activities will reinforce the learning that occurs during game play.

These supplemental resources - lessons, activities, and worksheets - are in the following SELskill areas: Communication, Cooperation, Emotion Regulation, Empathy, Impulse Control, and Social Initiation.

These resources are age-appropriate for elementary and middle school students and are typically used in a classroom or a small group setting. And in most cases, if materials are required for the activity, they are items that you already have in your classroom or office.
Note: Please share this page on your school website so other educators may also benefit.
Social Emotional Learning at Home

Additional Resources for Social Emotional Learning

Our classroom management plan is a step-by-step guide and includes proven strategies, tips and printables for elementary school teachers, and it covers four key components for establishing a successful, well-managed classroom.

These free downloadable posters will decorate your classroom and be great teaching resources, reinforcing social and emotional skills in your classroom and reminding students to practice their skills like emotion regulation, impulse control, empathy, and more.

Social Emotional Learning Quotes

For each of the topics below, we have curated a list of quotes. You can incorporate these quotes in your social emotional learning lessons, add them to social media images, create classroom posters, or write one on your whiteboard each day.

Need Something More Engaging And Effective For A Few Students?

Simply request a FREE Centervention educator account and start using our online programs!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
95 Free Social Emotional Learning Activities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
95 free social emotional learning activities, worksheets, and lessons to help students in elementary and middle school. Most are no-prep and ready to go.

# data[].attributes.body
Group Activities：Teamwork and Cooperation

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When cooperating, everyone's strengths need to come together to make a strong team. Everyone has personal strengths and weaknesses. But on a team, individuals can make up for teammates' weaknesses to lead to success. On this page, you will find free social skill group activities that are appropriate for students in elementary and middle school.

In addition, you can find a broader selection of individual and social skill group activities here.

Note: Educators are free to use these activities with students via other platforms like Google Classroom as needed.

Students Will

Listen to classmates' preferences and strengths

Compromise with classmates

Troubleshoot to find the best solution

Materials

Team task cards (in printable worksheet)
Pre-Discussion

Are there any strengths you have that may be stronger than others? For example, are you the best at math, a sport, music, etc?

What are some of your weaknesses or things in which you aren't the strongest?

Does everyone have the same strengths and weaknesses?

Activity Directions

1. Split the students into even teams.

2. Each member of the team must complete the task on a Team Task card.

3. Students must work together to decide which student's strengths would be best suited to complete which Team Task. For example, the student who is best at and/ or loves math would probably be best at the word problem task. A creative person who likes art should probably design the team logo. Someone who struggles with reading should probably not do the first Team Task.

4. Students should focus on what's best for the team, not what they personally WANT to do most. If someone is good at math and art and would prefer to do art, but another team member is only good at art, they need to compromise.

5. Optional: To make the activity more challenging, tell students that all 8 tasks need to be completed. Some team members may need to do multiple tasks while others may only do one, depending on their strengths and ability to work quickly.

Post Discussion
Go over the following questions with the group:

What are the benefits of working on a team?

Were there any instances in which you had to compromise with a teammate?

Did you overcome your team challenges? Why or why not?

As you discuss these questions, help guide students to the idea that teams are the most successful when you work together to use each others' strengths and make up for each others' weaknesses.

Do you explicitly teach compromise in your classroom?

This worksheet help students compromise on activities to make sure everyone in the group is included and can enjoy the activity. Students will be presented with three different animals who want to play together, and three activities that they could choose. Students will need to identify which activity would be best for the whole group to enjoy together and explain why they picked that activity over the others.

For example, what activity could a bat, a bird, and a chameleon enjoy together? The bat and the bird would probably enjoy flying together, but that would leave the chameleon out. But they all could enjoy catching bugs!

With this activity, you can teach compromise and help foster a more inclusive classroom where students aren't left out because they can't do something or don't like something.

Cooperation games are a great way to teach teamwork and strategy. In this activity, students will practice their cooperation skills to make sure everyone "catches Lester," or touches a ball, in the shortest amount of time possible.

Have you ever had a class that just could NOT get along? Whether it started at the beginning of the year and kept building, or there just seemed to be something in the air one week, having your kids at each other's throats day after day makes it really hard to get any teaching done.

This cooperation game may be just the trick.

All you need is a ball, a timer, at least 5-6 kids, and a little patience. You don't need a lot of space, so it can be done in a classroom, but what a great opportunity to get outside if you can!

The goal for this cooperation games is for students to come up with a way for every team member to "catch" or touch a ball that represents the Zoo U character Lester in the shortest amount of time possible. There are several ways that this can be accomplished, and the most successful ones involve teamwork and strategy.

Discussion questions will include:

Were we more successful when we had a plan? Why?

Was there anything that didn't help the group?

What strategy was the most successful in our goal of everyone "catching Lester" in the shortest amount of time? Why was it successful?

Having a clear strategy before we try something makes it more likely we will reach our goal. If the first strategy doesn't work, it just means we need to brainstorm again and try a different strategy. When we work together and listen to each other's ideas, we can come up with a plan to achieve greater success.

Students Will: Work together to create a strategies to reach a goal; Cooperate to apply these strategies

Materials: medium size ball (dodgeball size), stopwatch (like on a smartphone)

In this working together activity, students will practice their cooperation skills to keep a balloon in the air while holding hands.

Students Will: work together with classmates to achieve a goal

Materials: balloons
Directions:

1. Split students into pairs and have them practice gently bouncing a balloon with their partner.

2. When students have had sufficient practice, have your entire group form a circle and hold hands.

3. Explain that the goal of the activity is to see how many times the group can bounce the balloon to keep it in the air without dropping hands. To achieve this goal, the group must move and work cooperatively with each other.

4. Players can pass the balloon with any part of their bodies except for their feet.

5. If the balloon touches the ground, or students drop their hands, the count must start over. 6. Allow the group several repetitions before starting the discussion.

Discussion:
Go over the following questions with the group:

What was the experience of keeping the balloon in the air like when you worked with a partner vs. when the whole group was working together?

What skills did group members have to use to keep the balloon in the air? What didn't help the group?

Were we able to achieve our group goal? What was our highest count? Were we more successful the longer we did the activity?

As you discuss these questions, help guide students to the idea that when we work together, we will achieve greater success.

This Cooperation Skills activity is a good way to teach students how to work together to solve a problem.

Students, working in pairs, will be given two halves of the same drawing. They will need to use good communication and cooperation skills to describe their part of the drawing to their partner. In the end, each partner should end up with the same drawing.

Students will discuss what it's like working with a partner who they can't trust to do the work vs. what it's like to work with a partner they enjoy working with and can trust completely to do the work.

The concept of this activity is similar to the board game battleship. You set up your ships on your board, and your opponent sets up his, but partitions block you from seeing each other's. While the goal of the game is to sink each other's ships, it still requires communication skills as well as trust in your partner. If you don't trust that your partner is playing in good faith, you can't trust that he is telling the truth about the location of his ships. And if you don't have good communication skills, neither of you will progress very far in the game.

The same goes for this activity. You need to trust your partner that he can communicate accurate and clear instructions to you on how to complete your part of the drawing, and you need to work hard to do the same for your partner.

It can be hard to teach students how to cooperate because it seems like such an abstract skill. But this activity can help students build their cooperation skills and the necessary communication skills needed to support them.

Each social and emotional skill in Zoo U is represented by an animal. We chose lions to represent Cooperation because of the way lions work together to hunt large prey. Each lion has a special job during the hunt that they train for from the time they're cubs; and, the hunt is most successful when each lion can perform her special job that matches her skills.

In this teamwork activity, students are told that they are making a movie, and they need to assign the roles of actor, director, camera operator and film critic to four different lions. The worksheet has pictures of each lion and lists their unique skills, and students must choose which lion's skills best fit each role.

This activity is a great opportunity to discuss with students the idea that we all have special skills or character traits to offer to the group, and we're all most successful when we use our strongest skills to help our team.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When cooperating, everyone's strengths need to come together to make a strong team. Everyone has personal strengths and weaknesses. But on a team, individuals can make up for teammates' weaknesses to lead to success. On this page, you will find free social skill group activities that are appropriate for students in elementary and middle school.

# data[].attributes.body
An SEL Skill Goals Bulletin Board

An idea is to create an SEL skill bulletin board for your room to recognize overall class progress in each skill. Set goals for how many of each skill animal you want the class to earn per week and what reward will occur when they reach the goal.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you have students using our online social emotional learning curriculum, it's important to reinforce the learning that is happening in the games with real world lessons and activities. To assist, we have a libary of over 75 free social emotional activities, lessons, and printables.

Also, you can show an ongoing commitment to social emotional learning by recognizing students who demonstrate good or improving SEL skills.

To help, we've created three SEL printables using characters from Zoo Academy and Zoo U:

SEL skill award slips

An SEL skills bulletin board

An SEL skill poster

SEL Skill Awards

You can get your whole class involved in showing the six social emotional skills with our SEL award slips.

When you notice a student demonstrating one of the skills, simply jot down who it's for and why they are being recognized. As an alternative, you can have your students create peer awards for their classmates.

Take a couple minutes each morning, perhaps as part of your morning meeting, to read the awards to the class and acknowledge the students.

And consider creating a space on your wall or in the hallway to display the awards so students can be reminded of their sucesses.

An SEL Skill Goals Bulletin Board

Another idea is to create an SEL skill bulletin board for your room to recognize overall class progress in each skill. Set goals for how many of each skill animal you want the class to earn per week and what reward will occur when they reach the goal.

In the printable package, we have included a small grid, like the one you see to the right, and pages with the Zoo Academy and Zoo U skill animals.

And in case you want to create a larger bulletin board, we have included bigger versions of the animals.

SEL Skill Poster

A great way to keep social emotional concepts fresh in the mind of your students is by displaying a poster with the six social emotional skills.

You can integrate the vocabulary terms into the common dialogue of your classroom and reference the posters as needed.

For example, when introducing a group project, tell students they will need to practice their cooperation and communication skills to work together successfully.

In addition, we have a collection of classroom posters and decorations available here.

Would You Like To Receive Free SEL Lessons Each Week?

With a Centervention Account, you will receive free lessons and a free trial for our online SEL programs.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you have students using our online social emotional learning curriculum, it's important to reinforce the learning that is happening in the games with real world lessons and activities. To assist, we have a libary of over 75 free social emotional activities, lessons, and printables.