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Insight refers to the ability to know your emotions and how they affect your thoughts and actions. Gaining insight is an important skill for building self-confidence, self-awareness, and empathy for others. Insight helps students recognize their own strengths, areas of growth, identities, and how they complement each other in the larger society. Insight also helps students value how others feel and think differently from themselves.
Discover a variety of lessons and exercises that strengthen INSIGHT skills by clicking on the links below.
Discover a variety of lessons and exercises that strengthen INSIGHT skills by clicking on the links below.
FREE // K-6TH GRADE
About: There are many effective ways to solve a problem. In this activity, students will imagine difficult situations and talk about strategies for making responsible, ethical, and healthy choices. Talking about these choices will help students make decisions in the future when problems arise.
Individual lessons are available for Kindergarten, First Grade, Second Grade, Third Grade, Fourth Grade, Fifth Grade, and Sixth Grade.
FREE // K-6TH GRADE
About: Young children who can accurately read facial expressions and assign an appropriate emotion to a situation perform better academically, have fewer behavior problems, and demonstrate greater prosocial (kind, helpful) behavior. For this activity, in a group meeting students share their feelings while also building their feelings vocabulary and emotion knowledge.
Individual lessons are available for Kindergarten, First Grade, Second Grade, Third Grade, Fourth Grade, Fifth Grade, and Sixth Grade.
FREE // P-2ND GRADE
About: Kindness has been found to benefit students by increasing their well-being and peer acceptance, both of which lead to greater academic achievement, a stronger sense of belonging, and better relationships with peers and teachers. In this lesson, students think of ways they have acted with kindness towards others and then draw and write about it.
FREE // P-12TH GRADE
About: Students or staff sit in a circle, center themselves with a Mindfulness Moment, and use a talking piece to respectfully take turns answering a question about how they are doing. They close the Circle process by reflecting on the effectiveness of the process itself.
FREE // 6TH-12TH GRADE
About: 30 Days of simple, at-home, mood-boosting activities & challenges from THE CORE PROJECT©.
FREE // P-5TH GRADE
About: Students take a few minutes to draw anything they like, learning an emotion regulation strategy that can help shift unpleasant emotions to calmer, more pleasant ones.
FREE // 3RD-12TH GRADE
About: This variation on freewriting is a method of inner inquiry, helping students to explore their thoughts, emotions, or ideas on a topic of their choice, an academic-related question, or an ethical dilemma.
FREE // 3RD-8TH GRADE
About: In this exercise, students examine how they face everyday moral dilemmas and consider who and what influences their reactions when conflicts arise. These types of discussions can help students think in a more critical and sophisticated way about the social and ethical challenges they may face.
FREE // 9TH-12TH GRADE
About: Students apply a “growth mindset” lens to people who exclude others and/or are victims of exclusion, recognizing that people can change for the better.
FREE // P-12TH GRADE
About: Students notice what it feels like inside their bodies when they are shaking or tensing body parts, resting their bodies, and transitioning between these states.
FREE // 3RD-12TH GRADE
About: Students learn to care for themselves by planning enjoyable activities to combat stress and anxiety.
FREE // P-12TH GRADE
About: Students record three good things that happened to them each day for a week and an explanation of how they achieved or contributed to the good things.
FREE // P-2ND GRADE
About: A quick and fun way to help your kid learn about how emotions make their body feel. This activity can be done in 10 miuntes.
FREE // 6TH-12TH GRADE
About: Students watch the film Earthrise and learn how the emotion of awe felt by the Apollo 8 astronauts and the world helped them to experience the world as a shared home.
FREE // 7TH-10TH GRADE
About: Self-efficacy is using success in an area of your life as a personal reference point for ability, leading to a sense of personal achievement and belief in yourself.
This lesson explores the concept of ‘self-efficacy’ and developing ‘self-belief’. These skills are important for students using a positive outlook to achieve goals and develop resilience.
FREE // 1ST-5TH GRADE
About: Mind Yeti is a library of research-based guided mindfulness sessions that help kids and their adults calm their minds, focus their attention and connect to the world around them. Created by nonprofit Committee for Children.
CLICK HERE to view the FREE playlist of Mind Yeti videos on Youtube.
FREE & PAID // K-5TH GRADE
About: What is active listening, how do students do it, and why? This lesson answers these questions and provides ways for you to increase active listening in your classroom using fun games and exercises to reach all students.
FREE // 6TH-12TH GRADE
About: This practice, inspired by the lectio divina method, asks students to read a text slowly and carefully and then reflect on it, helping to cultivate deeper awareness and understanding.
FREE // 6TH-12TH GRADE
About: Students watch videos on prosocial (kind, helpful) action, complete self-reflection activities, and plan and record their prosocial acts over ten consecutive days. They finish with a reflection on the impact of their actions.
ABOUT: Students learn about the three parts of the brain–the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the prefrontal cortex–involved with emotion regulation, attention, and learning to engage their interest and enhance their self-awareness.
Understanding these parts of the brain and how they work can help students get better at making good choices and learn better.
Through this activity, we introduce students to the concept that they can use their brain in ways that will help them focus their attention when needed, calm themselves in the face of anxiety, and be less reactive and more proactive in creating a more productive experience.
FREE // K-12TH GRADE
About: Novels and short stories are filled with emotions. The characters in them experience the ups and downs of the human condition, often in dramatic fashion. And as we read along, we feel things, too—about the characters and ourselves. For these reasons, literature offers a gateway to social-emotional learning (SEL) in your classroom.
FREE // P-12TH GRADE
About: In this quick activity, students participate by sharing roses—something positive going on for a student that day—and thorns, which are negative, or at least less than positive. The rose and thorn check-in is a quick strategy for building community and developing student voice.
FREE // K-12TH GRADE
About: In this guide, you will find activities that are aligned to Sandy Hook Promise’s Start With Hello and Say Something programs. These activities also boost essential social and emotional skills needed during times of social distancing. The activities can be shared with students, used and modelled by trusted adults, and given as ‘Promise Challenges’ by educators. Each activity supports at least one of the five CASEL competencies.
FREE // 6TH-8TH GRADE
About: Respect and understanding ensue when students allow themselves to become more aware that everyone has a story. If they just look a little closer, they may see a whole new side to someone that they once only judged and/or dismissed. When we understand this reality and learn to look at others with compassion and understanding, people become real. It’s hard to treat someone poorly once you get to know them. The goal of this lesson is to help students to look closer at those around them and become more empathetic.
Show Persistence
Show Persistence
FREE // 3RD-5TH GRADE
About: A short film, by Wahgunyah Primary School, about the importance of showing persistence to reach your goal.
FREE // 9TH-12TH GRADE
About: Students explore and write about what makes a good life, using Aristotle as a guide.
FREE // 6TH-12TH GRADE
About: Students write a description of their ideal world and how they might contribute to creating that world.
FREE // K-5TH GRADE
About: WorryWoos were crearted to help children understand and embrace difficult emotions. By personifying emotions as lovable characters, children become empowered by feelings and want to share them with others. WorryWoos provide a wonderful opportunity as they enable kids with all types of personal issues to talk about their emotions and understand that they are not alone.
FREE // K-12TH GRADE
About: What does mindfulness do to spark “the joy of just being”? And, how can we teach kids to start benefiting from its practice? This article delves into both of these questions and includes plenty of science-based, comprehensive exercises that will not only help you cultivate a sense of inner peace throughout your daily life but will also give you the tools to enhance the mindfulness of your children and/or students.
FREE // K-12TH GRADE
About: The 2021-2022 Kindness Calender for Schools is a perfect addition to the walls of any hallway, office, classroom or teacher’s lounge. You can even start your morning announcements with a kindness idea from the calendar!
FREE // K-3RD GRADE
About: Looking for ways to help your child with social-emotional learning (SEL)? Many schools have started teaching kids how to do things like cope with feelings, set goals, and get along with others. Here are a handful of social-emotional learning activities that can help children manage emotions and work on social skills — and have some fun with you along the way. These social-emotional learning games are very low-tech and all are designed to fit easily into daily routines.
FREE // P-2ND GRADE
About: There are 5 identified emotions in the movie, Inside Out: Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, and Fear. Kids’ emotional intelligence “IQ” (being able to recognize their own emotions and other people’s as well as label those emotions) is a really important thing to help develop.
FREE // P-3RD GRADE
About: Social-emotional learning is critical to student development and their overall well-being. Learning to understand and cope with their feelings will help ensure students achieve their maximum potential in school and beyond. Whether you use these selections during story time, for independent reading, or part of your SEL curriculum, they’re sure to help your students gain greater awareness of their feelings and how to handle them.
FREE // 6TH-12TH GRADE
About: Organized into categories that focus on relationships, emotions, how you feel about work, etc., these 64 journal prompts help in self-discovery and self-reflection. Some prompt examples include:
FREE // K-5TH GRADE
About: List of books encouraging and teaching kindness. Also, these books are cited as required materials throughout the Random Acts of Kindness Curriculum.
FREE
About: Teachers and parents – are you looking for a way to engage young learners in fun career awareness and career exploration activities? Here are home learning materials you can put to immediate use with K-5 students. And, since distance learning has become the norm, they’re easy to implement outside the classroom.
FREE // P-1ST GRADE
About: This interactive helps children understand their emotions. Children are presented with scenarios (it’s their birthday, their brother breaks a favorite toy, etc.) and asked to click on one of three icons that represent feeling happy, sad, and angry. If they click on an icon that is not the most appropriate for the scenario, the icon turns red and they choose again.
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