Social emotional learning activities for middle school support students to learn and develop in their middle school years. The basic concepts of social-emotional learning development are being taught to them.
These development activities assist them in promoting themselves through social-emotional learning.
Social- emotional learning activities work according to the structure in the curriculum, based on different discussions.
Here are the necessary details related to social-emotional learning activities for middle school students.
With this, the blog informs you about how you can advance in them, for middle school students.
Contents
For middle school, social- emotional learning (SEL) activities aim to promote self-awareness and positive relationships. It encourages setting goals, managing emotions and stress, sharing, and getting engaged in teamwork.
Here are a few mainstream social-emotional learning activities for middle school students.
These social-emotional learning activities will help you to beat the competitive level in middle school classes. This will promote them towards their development and success.
There are different online courses for professional development of students. This will help middle school students in enhancing their skills.
Here you can go through different social-emotional learning activities that are important in middle school. There are as follows:
1. Self- awareness
Self-awareness is the ability to understand one’s emotions, thoughts and feelings. It is the main core of social- emotional learning activities that children should follow.
Setting realistic goals and achieving them, makes you feel confident about yourself.
2. Enhancing skills
Enhancing skills refers to the ability that develops emotional, social, cognitive and self- awareness skills in children. These skills are required for skill development in middle school.
Here are some tips to for middle school students.
3. Self- management
Self- management is the ability to manage one’s own emotions and behaviour. It is the basic skill required for students in all classes, especially middle school.
It is promoted through assignment completion and other activities to enhance self- management skills. To learn such skills, go through how students improve time management skills in middle school class
4. Social awareness
Social awareness involves social skills, understanding the emotions and feelings and building empathy. Such activities are held to teach students about such skills at a middle school age. Such SEL activities stimulate students to socialize and interact with each other.
Certain activities are promoted to educate them about safety and societal issues. These are such as discussion events, engagement and participation, quizzes, etc.
5. Decision- making
Decision-making refers to the process of making choices and making judgments based on certain evidence. It is an important part of both personal and professional life. In middle school, students are taught to be unbiased and make decisions.
Decision making should be based upon facts and information, and after analysis.
Fun Social- emotional learning activities for middle school students
Here are some fun social- emotional learning activities for middle school students. These SEL activities are perfect for middle school children which are designed to help students in teamwork, self- awareness, empathy and decision- making.
1. Emotion Charades
In emotion charades, students have to act out different emotions like happy, sad, angry or excited states. And, they have to act out emotions without speaking. In the next step, the audience has to guess that particular emotion.
Playing methods:
(i.) There is an emotion wheel, with different emotion faces such as, happy, asd, angry or excited.
(ii.) Children have to choose or select any emotion and act it out.
(iii.) Other students or the audience have to guess it out and say which emotion it is.
(iv.) Later, they can even discuss different emotions among themselves.
Implications: Such social- emotional learning activity builds empathy, emotional intelligence and social skills.
2. Strength chart bingo
Students have to write their strengths in a chart and other peer groups have to match such traits among themselves.
Playing methods:
(i.) Each student will receive an identical card.
(ii.) Classmates can walk over and ask students about their strengths and rick marks in the bingo chart.
Disclaimer: A student can sign only once in the chart.
(iii.) First student to complete a row will have to shout as BINGO.
Implications: The Bingo chart SEL game helps in self- awareness and recognition for students.
3. Breathing Exercise
Breathing exercises are inhaling and exhaling exercises which bring freshness and awareness to students. Students have to do breathing exercises and teachers would set targets for one minute or so. One by one each of them will be checked on their target completion.
Playing methods:
(i.) Use a square card on board.
(ii.) Guide them with breathing exercise movements, like inhaling and exhaling, in sequence.
(iii.) Count 1,2,3 as they move with breathing exercise movements.
(iv.) Play soft and subtle music videos to make students go.
Implications: Breathing exercise would boost self- regulation and self- management skills.
4. Quick guess scenarios
In this game, students would give two or three scenarios and put in a dilemma/ confusion. They have to discuss among peer groups such situations and guess out role- plays.
Playing methods:
(i.) A student has to come in the front and pick up a guess card.
(ii.) As per scenario card, they have to act it out with their expressions and feelings, without any word.
(iii.) Other classmates have to guess that scenario that has been acted out.
Implications: This game promotes social- awareness and decision making.
5. Identity figure
Identifying figures means to identify, recognise and name certain emotions, images and pictures. Students have to make figure collages from images, pictures, words or symbols.
Playing methods:
(i.) Any particular type of figure will be presented in front of a student.
(ii.) Students will have to guess which figure type is that, either square, triangle, circle or rectangle.
(iii.) It can also be any popular figure from the internet.
Implications: It promotes self- expression and self-awareness.
6. Sharing story
In a sharing story game, a student stands up and shares prompts, other students have to act out and guess it. They have to discuss such situations among the student circle itself.
Playing methods:
(i.) Students have to share a story about their moments of pride, guilt, win or other.
(ii.) They can share a story like, “helping someone”, “lesson story”, “pride moment”, etc.
Implications: This game helps in building trust, empathy and active listening.
1. Encouraging kindness
Encouraging kindness as part of middle school students’ learning is important. Such basic learning activities are included in the curriculum.
This is for establishing and creating a positive learning environment for the students.
.2. Promoting positivity:
Positivity is an important factor in advancing socio-economic learning activity. For middle school students, promoting positivity is vital since they are in their learning period.
Students learn to handle different critical situations with positivity and manage them.
3. Managing emotions:
Managing emotions is taught to students from their teenage years. Mostly in middle school, students face difficulty managing their emotions. This affects their mental and physical health as well.
To make them learn emotions, different workshops and activities are arranged. They are things such as playing games, interacting with others, and workshops on handling emotions, etc.
Also read: social-emotional learning
4. Practicing gratitude:
Practicing gratitude is kept as the foremost learning for middle school students. This is to promote gratitude and not be self-centered. The teachings of gratitude go a long way.
Simple communication skills, like “Thank you”, “welcome”, etc., promote a sense of gratitude among students. This enhances the social-emotional learning habits among middle- school children.
5. Art and craft activities:
Through art and craft activities, students are taught to get engaged in work. This promotes social emotional learning by getting engaged in different projects.
Children have to interact, participate with each other and apply techniques.
6. Playing games
Game activities seem more interesting to students, especially those who are in their middle school classes. Playing games keeps their mental and physical health fit.
Playing games includes different activities that promote social-emotional learning for middle school students.
Also read: educational games for high school students here.
Students’ participation in social-emotional learning is encouraged. In middle school classes, students mostly need guidance from their teachers and parents.
In order to increase student participation, you can refer to best suited online educational activities
To promote this, teacher-parent meetings are arranged. Discussion includes problems and concerns faced, different issues of students in middle school.
8. Setting goals as per the curriculum
Setting goals as per the curriculum keeps the learning flow in order. Curriculum sets the guidelines for learning and teaching.
For students in their idle school class, the curriculum sets the target to be reached. It also guides the approaches on how we can teach them.
There are different techniques and strategies that teachers can use for promoting social-emotional learning activities.
Learn about homeschooling curriculum in more detail.
Different activities are listed and explained above, which you can use to promote social- emotional learning in middle school.
Key Takeaways
The social emotional learning activities for middle school students include encouragement and promotion of different activities.
These activities are such as, self- awareness, self-management, managing emotions, skill enhancement, etc.
Such social- emotional activity shall be interactive and engaging for students. They not only foster understanding but also help in building kindness, empathy and spread social awareness, effectively.
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