How To Play:
In your deck, you'll have six different colored cards, five of which represent the five tenets of Social Emotional Learning.
What is Social Emotional Learning (SEL), you ask? SEL is an educational practice meant to incorporate relationship skills, self-managements skills, social-awareness skills, self-awareness skills and decision-making skills into our classroom curriculums.
Yellow cards: Relationship skills - questions/prompts that help students critically think about how to maintain relationships, as well as the difference between good and bad relationships.
Red cards: Self-management - questions/prompts that help students learn how to manage their time, their emotions, their stress, etc.
Green cards: Social-awareness - questions/prompts that encourage students to think about themselves in relation to the society around them.
Blue cards: Self-awareness - questions/prompts that help students think about their purpose and their goals. Students will think critically about who they are and who they want to be.
Purple cards: Decision-making skills - questions/prompts that help students make good choices in any situation. Students are encouraged to do a lot of reflecting and thinking when discussing their experiences with decision-making.
Black and white cards: Wild card - a blank card that encourages students to come up with their own questions
Paint Brush: If you see a paint brush icon on a card, this means this card can be answered as an art piece, a journal or any other response tool students may want to use. Students can really push their creativity with these cards.
Within each of these different colored decks, you will also see either Level 1 or Level 2 at the tops of the cards. Level 1 cards are questions or prompts that can be posed early on in the classroom, sometime within the first two months of building relationships and community. Level 2 cards should be added once students and teachers have closer bonds and have really developed trust.
Step by step guide:
First! In any situation, be sure that you've developed Community Agreements with your class prior to playing this game. Why? Great question! Community Agreements are a set of statements relating to trust, wants and needs in order for students to feel safe in their classroom. It is vital for students to begin to build a trusting community with one another, and building community agreements together is a great way to start. If you'd like more information on creating Community Agreements, read this article for some tips and pointers.
Decide whether you want to work on one skill at a time, or mix up the cards and work on any and all tenets of SEL. Choose the accurate level(s) for your classroom.
Game 1: Large group activity
Sit in a circle, if possible.
One student picks the first card and reads it out loud. The group responds to the card.
Share out responses.
Discard the card and repeat!
If you pull a Wild Card, the person who pulls the card may come up with their own question to ask the group.
Game 2: Small group activity
Break the class into groups. These groups may be as small as 2 people or as large as 6.
One student picks the first card and reads it out loud. The group responds to the card.
Share out responses.
Discard the card and repeat!