TESOL
Are You a Good Listener?
Your learners talk to each other every day, but are they really listening? Use a lesson plan based on listening skills to ensure that class members feel heard and respected. It includes games, discussion topics, and self-assessment tools...
Nemours KidsHealth
Getting Along: Grades 6-8
Three activities are designed to help middle schoolers develop the skills they need to get along with others, to develop tolerance and appreciation for similarities and differences, and to generate strategies for resolving conflicts. The...
Helena-West Helena School District
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Instructional Unit Plan
Maya Angelou's first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, demonstrates both the author's exemplary writing and the themes of gender and racial injustice that perpetuate beyond the limits of the 20th century. Use a thorough...
Curated OER
Someones Else's Shoes
Build a caring and empathetic classroom community. This presentation provides several scenarios to discuss. It focuses on how each scene makes a person feel, then how someone else might feel. A great way to start a discussion or to build...
Amnesty International
Respect My Rights, Respect My Dignity: Module Two – Housing is A Human Right
Take learners on a journey throughout the world to discover how other people live. Scholars experience a taste of what life feels like for those in poverty and without housing. Activities include discussions, building a cardboard house,...
Health Smart Virginia
Relationship Skills and Communication
Relationship and communication skills are the heart of a activity that focuses on passive, aggressive, and assertive communication. After examining examples of each type, teams develop an assertive, win/win solution that resolves a...
Health Smart Virginia
Social Emotional Skills Lessons Overview
The Unit 1 - Overview of the Health Smart Grade 6 series provides instructors with the rationale and goals of a five-resource unit designed to support scholars' social and emotional development. Packed with activity ideas, the resource...
Curated OER
Emotion Card Games
Emotions come in all shapes and sizes, and can be difficult for young learners or students with special needs to identify. Support them in gaining the valuable social skill of recognizing emotions and understanding empathy with this...
Curated OER
Learning Empathy Through Art
Students create poems based on the Haiku form and research about WWII. Class discussion and classroom readings of student work finish this lesson. Emphasis is placed on Standards in the Arts.
Curated OER
Exploring Emotions Through Activities
You'll definitely want this rich compilation of worksheets and activities in your toolbelt as you review and discuss the range of emotions we have as human beings. Activities include defining feelings, identifying ways we express...
Curated OER
Rachel's Life is in a Hole
Explore how lack of access to water impacts peoples' lives in poor countries. Through text reading and discussion, middle schoolers are presented with the story of a young girl who lives and functions with limited water resources. They...
Bully Free Systems
Bully Free Lesson Plans—Eighth Grade
Middle schoolers are likely very familiar with the concept of bullying and cliques. Discuss their experiences and brainstorm ways to handle peer conflict and feelings of exclusion with a poem that focuses on bullying, and a second lesson...
Ophelia Project
Let’s Be Friends
Introduce positive social skills and friendship to young learners with this wonderfully designed eight-lesson unit. It includes several activities to help learners identify positive attributes, build empathy, and understand the qualities...
Humane Education Advocates Reaching Teachers
Justice for All - Educating Youth for Social Responsibility: Grades K-5
In grades kindergarten through fifth grade, scholars take part in a social-emotional learning unit designed to boost social responsibility. Three hundred pages provide lessons and activities related to everyday classroom practices, the...
Curated OER
Anti-Bullying Efforts in the Elementary Classroom
Help prevent bullying from ever beginning with these simple strategies for implementing class meetings.
Curated OER
Emergency Shelter Project: Empathy Unit
Students design emergency shelters. In this designing emergency shelters lesson, students discuss living conditions of people after a natural disaster. Students discuss the tsunami that struck East Asia. Students design collapsible...
Missouri Department of Elementary
Respect for All Kinds of People Inside and Outside the School
Why is it important to embrace diversity? Scholars explore the topic by learning about the CARE acronym: Collaboration, Acceptance, Respect, Empathy. They also complete a diversity puzzle worksheet and play a collaborative game that...
Missouri Department of Elementary
Similar and Different
Using a Venn diagram, pupils compare the similarities and differences between two classmates. Next, they review the CARE acronym (Collaboration, Acceptance, Respect, Empathy) and discuss how it applies to diversity in the classroom.
PBS
Setting in To Kill a Mockingbird
Can you understand more about how a person acts by learning about how that person lives? An interactive resource explores the setting of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird with several slides discussing the location, social conditions,...
Social Skills Central
Photo Cartoons: How To Give A Compliment
Help learners develop the ability to offer appropriate, meaningful compliments to others—an essential social skill. Here you'll find a quick photo cartoon illustrating a right and wrong way to give a compliment, as well as a brief...
Community High School of Vermont
Habits of the Mind
An informative one-page resource details the 16 Habits of Mind. Habits encourage positive problem-solving, self-awareness, creativity, and dedication—lifelong skills that can be used in both academic and social settings.
Missouri Department of Elementary
Juggling New Opportunities
Life is like trying to juggle three tennis balls! That's the big idea in a lesson that asks freshmen to consider that sometimes juggling the areas of their lives (social/emotion, academic, and career) runs smoothly and sometimes not so...
Overcoming Obstacles
Resolving Conflicts
A lesson about resolving conflicts guides young scholars through the process of identifying emotions and reflecting on the situation, all before taking action. The lesson encourages class members to stay open-minded and listen to the...
Curated OER
Looking at the World
This set of discussion questions prompts learners to think about their place in the global community. These questions encourage them to consider food availability, free community services, schooling, and what life in other countries...