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Increased mindfulness can enhance a range of important social and emotional skills, including self-awareness, empathy, handling stress, and identifying emotions. As students think about their feelings, they will begin to practice self-control and self-regulation, which can boost focus and promote accountability. Through meditation exercises, physical activities, calming strategies, and role-playing scenarios, kids can benefit in and out of the classroom.
Sesame Street's newest human resident, Mando (introduced in the fall of 2013), narrates while kids and a blue monster together tackle everyday frustrations -- like struggling to tie shoes, dealing with separation anxiety, taking turns, and going to bed -- and learn how to deal with them.
QuaverSEL is an interactive online social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculum. Quaver uses music, movement, and highly engaging visual presentations to connect with students and teach SEL skills. There are over 250 lessons for grades pre-K-5, and new content is added monthly. The curriculum addresses all core competencies defined by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), covering the five basic SEL skills of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
Super Stretch encourages kids to try their best; no pose has to be perfect. Kids can choose to try each pose individually or to play through them all. Either way, the video stops between poses and Super Stretch reminds kids to breathe as they listen to calming music.
GoNoodle is a series of web-based videos, games, and activities focused on introducing short bursts of physical exercise in the classroom. For young children who need to burn up energy to concentrate on learning, this is a simple solution. The site is meant to be used for physical activity in five- to 10-minute bursts, particularly during transition periods.
Mindful Powers is an iOS app for kids to learn and practice mindfulness. A youthful narrator explains that a Flibbertigibbet, a sea creature who is shy but curious by nature, has a hard time focusing. The creature gets frustrated easily and turns into a spiky ball, so kids need to train the Flibbertigibbet to self-calm and relax.
Mind Yeti is an app that provides mindfulness instruction and meditative scripts for a variety of moods and needs. The app begins with a tutorial that introduces the concept of the Mind Yeti. Log in to save your favorite sessions and videos. Most videos are three to five minutes in length, and usually have an audio-only component. Featured sessions appear on the home screen and change daily.
Insight Timer is a meditation, relaxation, and mindfulness practice app. The users can choose from struggles like anxiety to self-esteem. Users can also select options to improve sleep, improve performance, manage stress, or even streamline mornings. For those just looking to develop a self-guided meditation practice, there's an option to choose a timer, bells (to structure the activity), and a type of meditation activity (e.g., walk or prayer).
MyLife Meditation (formerly Stop, Breathe & Think) is an app for kids and adults that offers brief meditations to address a range of emotional states. Kids click Check In to answer a few questions about their current state of mind: how they're feeling both mentally and physically, on a scale from "great" to "rough." Kids can then select up to five emotions from more than 80, and the app presents a curated list of meditations especially suited to the emotions selected.
Calm Harm - Manages Self Harm begins by asking teens to create a profile and set their location. Once they're ready to begin, they can select "Ride the Wave" and choose an area to focus on: Comfort, Distract, Express Yourself, Release, Random, or Breathe. Each of the six areas has different activities to help students manage the discomfort and urge to self-harm. Once they choose an area, kids can pick five- or 15-minute activities.
Smiling Mind is a great introduction to meditation. Simply locate a comfortable spot, plug in earphones, and press Play. Since kids practice privately, there's no need to worry about leading meditation circles full of nervous giggles (the app offers a chance to feel comfortable with meditation alone first). Each lesson is a sequential step toward learning how to meditate. A soothing Australian voice guides you through calming breathing exercises and visualizations
Daniel Tiger's Grr-ific Feelings is an early-education social and emotional learning app for preschoolers and kindergarten-age kids. Kids who are familiar with Daniel Tiger's PBS series will recognize him as well as other characters and the songs.
Bouncy the People Trainer is an interactive story that teaches social and emotional skills. Bouncy is a mixed-breed dog who survived abuse from a former owner and now trains people to navigate their own challenges. Kids start by designing their avatar, who appears in the stories, choosing from several diverse options of skin colors, eye shapes, and hair types.
Peekapak is a website that offers complete teaching units for 10 social and emotional learning (SEL) topics as well as the MyPeekaville interactive game (in beta). Kids explore the different topics as they accompany Leo the hedgehog and a mixture of human and animal characters throughout the school year in Peekaville.
Wisdom: The World of Emotions is an app that helps kids recognize anger cues in themselves and others. The player guides Wisdom, the main character, on a journey to help the citizens of the Kingdom of Anger manage their anger. To save the citizens, the player must win superpowers throughout a series of challenges.
Emotional ABCs Classroom is an online-based social and emotional learning (SEL) program. It begins by asking students to choose an avatar and password and begin the first lesson in Unit 1. The Emotional ABCs program has 10 units, each with several lessons. The lessons typically begin with a teachable video clip that introduces context and a skill. As students progress through the lesson, a meter tracks their progress. Students can also earn prizes along the way and unlock games or extra activities.
Zoo U is an online game that begins with an introduction and tutorial presented by an animated zookeeper, Principal Wild. Kids get oriented by tapping six sticky notes and following directions in a brief tutorial in an opening practice room. They make decisions by clicking on one of two or three choices within thought or speech bubbles. Once the preliminary scenarios are completed and their baseline data is automatically recorded, kids can practice specific skills such as empathy, managing feelings, self-control, and more.
7 Mindsets is a web-based program that teaches students the skills needed to master social and emotional learning (SEL) competencies. The 7 Mindsets are Everything Is Possible, Passion First, We Are Connected, 100% Accountable, Attitude of Gratitude, Live to Give, and The Time Is Now. After choosing their students' grade level (elementary, middle, or high school), teachers select one of several courses, which is typically an introduction, practice, or evaluation
Amaze is a website designed to help kids learn about sexual education, their changing bodies, and positive relationships. Created by three health and sexual information advocacy groups, the site serves as an online education resource for kids age 10 to 14. Short videos, which are released first on the site's YouTube channel, then hosted on Amaze, focus on topics ranging from puberty for boys to STDs and HIV.
Character Playbook is a web-based curriculum related to building healthy relationships. Students in grades 6 through 9 can explore brief, graphic novel-style modules in six areas, each of which is designed to take students 20 to 30 minutes. The six modules are: Analyzing Influence, Understanding and Managing Emotions, Communicating Effectively, Resolving Conflicts, Stepping In, and Making Decisions.
KIDS is an unusual, interactive, abstract animation app that evokes the experimental ideas of the avant-garde movement. It includes a few dozen scenes of simply illustrated individuals, groups of people, and shapes that kids can interact with, moving people around, pushing them into a hole, making them swim in outer space, causing them to clap, or dragging them along a conduit. Sometimes the action kids take goes with the crowd, sometimes against it.
Thrively is a website that helps kids find online and local activities that fit their particular interests. Thrively was created with input from pediatric neuropsychologists, and the site bursts with teacher-contributed lesson plans and ideas. Once a teacher sets up a class, kids take an assessment that identifies 23 potential strengths. The site then suggests activities tailored to kids' interests and strengths.
Mightifier is a web-based platform that teaches students how to give positive feedback. Teachers choose up to 27 characteristics that students can assign to their peers, and determine which students give feedback to each other. Mightifier also allows teachers to choose a randomized order or let the students choose.
Equity Maps - Chart Dialogue is an iPad app that enables teachers to track small or large group conversations to produce data about their students' behaviors. Teachers choose from a limited number of seating configurations and add male or female participants who populate the room via traditional gender symbols. Once everyone is seated, tap Record to start the session, and tap the symbols as students speak.
Me: A Kid's Diary by Tinybop has students reflect on and document who they are through drawings, photos, writing, and more. Students start by fashioning and naming their avatar and choosing their favorite color, both of which become the background for their unique identity map full of iconography.
inspirED's activities vary in duration from 10-minute exercises to one-hour lessons to project-based activities. The activities page also provides resources from CASEL (the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) and maps these activities to the five core social and emotional competencies: relationship skills, responsible decision making, self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness.
If you're looking for a tool to supplement discussion around emotional health, look no further. Let your students track what matters to them, build awareness by encouraging daily reflection, and gain insight into how their values and feelings relate. From a curriculum standpoint, Mitra could easily complement a lesson on journaling, charting, or using daily logs.
The Mood Meter is an app for analyzing, tracking, and monitoring mood. Students plot their moods on a color-coded chart filled with different words that describe a wide range of feelings. Strategies include images, quotes, coping strategies, and a list of the student's past descriptions linked to positive moods.
To fully engage in what Mindprint Learning offers, students first take an online assessment to measure strengths and challenges. This research-based assessment was developed by the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. The test assesses different types of memory, processing speed, attention, flexible thinking, verbal and abstract reasoning, and spatial perception using game-based and timed activities.
LearnStorm is a free six-week course through Khan Academy that helps encourage growth mindset and resiliency skills for students in grades 3-12. The website begins with a teacher dashboard that introduces you to the content and allows you to add your students to the class via the Khan Academy interface. LearnStorm then diverts students to the current weekly activity based on their progress.
Sown to Grow is a tool that students can use to set learning goals and reflect on their progress. The singular goal of the website is to help students develop a growth mindset in order to take a more active role in their learning. Before students log in, teachers set up a learning cycle, which includes learning objectives, assignments, and grading scales; assignments can include links to other websites.
Flipgrid is a website that allows teachers to create "grids" to facilitate video discussions. Each grid is like a message board where teachers can pose questions, called "topics," and their students can post video responses that appear in a tiled grid display. Grids can be shared with classes, small groups, or any collection of users interested in a common strand of questions. Each grid can hold an unlimited number of topics and each topic can hold an unlimited number of responses.
Couragion is a website that helps match students to STEM careers. Kids begin by answering a questionnaire that asks them about their values. They then use sliders and drag and drop their choices to signify the importance of things such as travel, recognition, creativity, and variety in their work.
Teachers can use Pairin in their classrooms or in professional learning communities. Using an in-service meeting to collaborate with school counselors and other character-education professionals could help boost professional development. Logging into the teacher dashboard quickly shows the overall perceived climate of the teacher's classroom based on student responses.
Sift - News Therapy is a subscription-based, iOS-only app that mixes self-reflection with a digestible exploration of today's most contentious news topics, such as immigration, gun control and regulation, health care, education, climate change, and media literacy. Readers scroll to the topic they want to learn about and then choose to read either the historical context section or the potential solutions.
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