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Middle schoolers may not have a spot in their schedule labeled “Social-Emotional Learning,” but it’s there nonetheless. Every laugh in the hallway, insecure thought or emotion, new friendship, and important choice gives them the chance to use and build SEL skills. And, these may be the most important lessons they’ll learn all year.
Foster their emotional awareness and regulation with creative SEL activities for middle school. From classroom ideas for emotional understanding to detailed lesson plans on friendship and bullying, you’ll find everything you need to guide middle schoolers.
What are the main SEL competencies?
The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) framework indicates that there are five core SEL competencies to address for teens. Most social-emotional learning skills fall under these categories, which include:
- Relationship Skills: Having a healthy definition of friendship that reflects one’s values, and developing clear communication skills to strengthen those connections.
- Self-Awareness: The ability to recognize one’s emotions and thoughts as they’re experiencing them, and how they affect a person throughout the day.
- Self-Management: How to manage and regulate emotions in different contexts and with various stressors.
- Social Awareness: Understanding the nuances and social cues of people around them, and how to take the perspective of someone else.
- Responsible Decision-Making: Being able to make healthy choices that benefit a person in the short term and the long term.
You may see additional skills mentioned in SEL literature and curricula, such as critical thinking, middle school study skills, and goal-setting. These executive functioning skills are also important for middle schoolers to master before high school, and when they do so, they can access their social-emotional understanding more easily.
Activities for Building Relationships and Social Skills
Middle schoolers are in a unique social period of their lives. They’re too old to play elementary games at recess, but not old enough to create complex relationships like high schoolers. Build off of SEL activities for elementary students with social emotional learning activities for middle school that give pre-teens some pointers in navigating relationships, friendships, and social situations.
- Write from another perspective. Using a middle school journal prompt, have students write about a situation in their lives or a fictional conflict. Then, have them write about the same conflict from the other person’s point of view.
- Practice clear communication. Challenge students to get a message from one end of the classroom to the other by whispering in each other’s ears: first with 20 words, then 10 words, then down to 5 or 2 words.
- Play a spider web connections game: One student holds a ball of yarn and calls out a fact about themself, such as “I like to play video games.” When someone raises their hand in agreement, the first student tosses the yarn to them, leaving a yarn trail. Then the second person says something about themself, and the game continues until the yarn shows how many connections exist in the class.
- Discuss traits of friendship. Have students talk about the differences between healthy and unhealthy friendships. Is it possible to like someone who isn’t the best influence in your life? Is it normal to have conflicts with friends in a healthy friendship?
Master conflict resolution and friendship traits
Social Situations Game | Social Skills | Bullying | Conflict Resolution
By Carol Miller – Counseling Essentials
Grades: 4th-9th
What makes one person a good friend, and what makes another person a bully? Use an SEL game for middle schoolers to consider fairness, cooperation, conflict, and citizenship as they relate to everyday social situations involving bullying.
Self-Awareness Activities for Middle Schoolers
Many SEL activities for middle school include elements of self-awareness, such as emotional awareness and a growth mindset. But self-awareness activities can also relate to a student’s interests and hobbies, as well as their general values and the way they see themselves as they begin a new phase of childhood.
- Make a character map. Have students map out their own character traits as if they were characters in a story or movie. What are their strengths? What are their weaknesses? What traits would help through different types of conflicts?
- Create a hobby timeline. Encourage students to consider when they began their favorite hobby, whether it’s soccer, coding, cheerleading, or anything else they participate in after class. They can use a posterboard to map out significant moments in the life of their hobby, and project how they’d like to be doing it five years from now.
- Transition with body check-ins. When you’re moving from activity to activity, take a moment to ask students to check in with their bodies. Where are they feeling tension? Are they tired, or worried, or breathing deeply enough?
- Make a thoughts-feelings-action comic strip. Working individually or with teams, students create a comic strip to show how a thought can lead to a feeling, which can lead to an action. They can create one strip per thought or incorporate the thoughts, feelings, and actions into a larger story.
Practice SEL exercises to become aware of your emotions
When you ask a middle schooler how they’re feeling, and they only shrug, it may be because they genuinely don’t know how they’re feeling. Help students become aware of their feelings and emotions with SEL activities for middle schoolers to examine where they feel emotions in their body and how it affects them for the rest of the day.
SEL Home Learning Packet supports Social Emotional Learning
By The Counseling Teacher Brandy
Grades: 2nd-8th
Incorporate high-quality and effective SEL activities into your curriculum with a helpful home learning packet. Complete with activities like a calming scavenger hunt, positive self-talk prompts, and a gratitude page, this resource is an excellent way to both teach and reinforce important SEL skills for this age group.
Stress Awareness and Self-Management Activities
While self-awareness focuses on being mindful of one’s emotions and reactions, self-management is the practice of regulating those emotions and managing stress. Help middle schoolers build these important skills with activities that belong in any class period and only take a few minutes to complete.
- Pause for self-reflection. After an assessment or a project, have students check in to see how the process went for them. Encourage them to set goals to ensure a different outcome, such as a higher grade or more confidence, and create an action plan to help students meet those goals.
- Create positive self-talk scripts. In pairs or groups, students create short skits that incorporate elements of positive self-talk. The scripts can include characters who stop thinking negatively about themselves, or they can focus on how positive self-talk leads to more desirable results.
- Make positive affirmation posters. Have students choose their favorite positive affirmations, either from quotes or their own creations, and give them art supplies to create posters to decorate your classroom.
- Craft stress-busting playlists. As a class or in groups, students can create a musical playlist that takes away their stress when they listen to it. They can also write a short reflection on why each song belongs on the playlist, what it makes them feel when they listen to it, and how it calms them down in stressful moments.
Determine what’s in and out of students’ control
If stress is a big factor in your middle schoolers’ lives, take some time to show them what they can actually affect and what’s out of their control. These may include political issues, problems with their parents or siblings, conflicts with friends, or increased stress over classwork and homework.
Circle of Control Social Emotional Learning Digital Activity School Counseling
By Teaching on Lemon Lane
Grades: 4th-12th
Worry and anxiety often stem from not knowing exactly what’s in our control. Teach middle schoolers about their circle of control and what falls inside and outside of it with a resource that includes journal reflections, stress management activities, and posters to remind students how to visualize their own circle of control.
Exercises to Work on Better Social Awareness
For some students, understanding the levels of social interaction at school is second nature, but to others, it’s nearly indecipherable. Use SEL activities for middle school to improve students’ social inferences, listening skills, and understanding of diversity.
- Dig deeper into fictional social situations. Take opportunities in literature or when discussing movies to analyze a social interaction. Why did the characters react the way they did? What could one character have said that would have resulted in a more positive outcome for both of them?
- Consider support systems. Have students take a moment to write about or discuss the main support systems in their lives. These people can include parents, family members, teachers, coaches, friends, or anyone else who makes them feel like they’re supported.
- Create a belonging chart. Ask students about where they feel they truly belong, whether it’s at home, on the baseball field, in the classroom, in music class, or anywhere else. Have them analyze what interactions make them feel this sense of belonging.
- Plan a community service project. From a list of community service ideas for middle school students, kids can choose a project to complete as a class or as smaller teams to strengthen their connection to their neighborhood.
Work on social inferences and reading social behavior
Social inferences skills TEENS older students scenario activities worksheets SEL
By Miss Dee’s Homeroom
Grades: 7th-10th
Some teens struggle to read social cues in different contexts, while others know the rules as easily as if they’ve read a manual. Clarify those hidden social expectations with a resource that addresses key social skills, including reading the room, perspective taking, and social awareness, and takes students through different social scenarios for practice.
Emphasize empathy with random acts of kindness
Nothing connects a group of people more than shared values. Have students report on random acts of kindness they see or exhibit themselves, and encourage them to reflect on how seeing the results of those acts affected them.
Random Act of Kindness Activities | Social Emotional Learning
By Sarah Anne
Grades: 5th-9th
In a positive classroom community, kindness is all around, and it starts with just one act! Focus on random acts of kindness with a resource that encourages middle schoolers to participate in a 10-day kindness challenge, complete with worksheets, lessons, and classroom decorations.
Classroom Activities to Encourage Responsible Choices
With increased responsibility and independence, middle school is one of the first opportunities students have to make responsible decisions for themselves. Students use their sense of self and ethics to make these choices, whether they’re deciding to take care of their bodies or they’re making decisions about their future.
- Connect healthy choices to values. Rather than naming some choices as “good” and others as “bad,” lead a discussion where students can decide how their daily choices reflect their values. For example, a healthy diet and hygiene habits indicate that they care about themselves, while choices about prioritizing schoolwork over screen time show that they value their education.
- Create a decision-making board game. Working in partners or groups, students create a “This or That?” style board game in which players progress by making responsible choices. They can use posters and markers to create their board games, or more technologically inclined students can make digital versions of their SEL games for middle school.
- Line up choices and consequences. Make two sets of cards (one with choices, the other with consequences) and hand them out to students. Those with choice cards need to find the person with the most natural consequences to that choice, such as “Sneaking out with friends” and “Getting in trouble with parents.”
- Set goals and monitor how decisions affect them. Have students set attainable goals for themselves at the beginning of the year or grading period, and brainstorm how the decisions they make will affect those goals. For example, if a student has a goal of earning an A or a B, what decisions will they need to make to ensure their goal can happen?
Use SEL skills to equip middle schoolers for high school
When you infuse your curriculum with SEL activities for middle school, everyone benefits. You get to know your students better, your students have a stronger sense of themselves and their needs, and your classroom runs more efficiently when everyone feels secure and attached. Use these suggestions and other middle school social-emotional resources, as well as more advanced SEL activities for high school, to reach those goals for yourself and your students.
