Most teachers agree that social emotional skills are extremely important to teach on a regular basis in the classroom. But sometimes, with the pressures of everything else that needs to be taught, these “extras” fall by the wayside.
So how can you find more ways to implement social emotional learning in and get all the other required work done? One excellent way is to use writing prompts that reinforce social emotional skills. Using these ideas in conjunction with your ELA program allows you to promote social emotional learning without feeling the pain of finding more time in your day.
And it makes a perfect way to have a discussion with your students about these very important concepts.
For a quick refresher, let’s look at the 5 components of social emotional learning:
- Self Awareness
- Self Management
- Social Awareness
- Relationship Skills
- Responsible Decision-making
If you need more information about each of these components, you can check out my article regarding social emotional skills here.
And if you are looking for more than an article, I found this book to be by far the best help for me:
Table of Contents
Social and Emotional Learning in Middle School: Essential Lessons for Student Success: Engaging Lessons, Strategies, and Tips That Help Students…Navigate Middle School
The Details
I am going to categorize each of the writing prompts according to the components of social emotional learning. That should make it easy for you to choose what to work on. It will give you at least 5 different writing sessions with your students.
I do have a couple of recommendations. First, make sure you give your students a choice. It will make them much more eager to write if they can write about what they want to.
And second, make sure that if you tweak these that you are careful not to make the topics too vulnerable for the students. We don’t want them to write something they will regret later. It has to be their choice as to how vulnerable they want to be in their writing.
And finally, I have included printable sheets for you to use in your classroom. In order to save money on printing such rich images, feel free to print and laminate them for long-term use! Enjoy!
Writing Prompts for Self Awareness
- Are you a self-confident person? If so, what do you think makes you that way? And if not, what do you think you could do to be more confident in yourself?
- What do you think is your best character strength? Why do you think it is your best? Give a couple of examples of how you use this strength.
- When things get tough, do you persevere through them? How do you do that? How would you like to grow in your perseverance skills?
- When you feel like you’ve been “knocked down,” how do you get up again? How do you wish you handled situations that set you back emotionally or physically?
- Do you find it easy or hard to believe in yourself and your abilities? Why do you feel that way? What can you do to feel better about yourself?
Writing Prompts for Self Management
- What do you do when you feel like you really need something and can’t wait for it? What would be the best way to handle that situation?
- What do you think are the best three things you can do when you are angry?
- Talk about one time in the past week that you had to make a difficult decision and you were strong enough to make the right choice.
- When you feel yourself getting stressed out, what can you do to start feeling at peace again?
- Describe a time that you were really afraid of something. How did you work through it? Who did you have help you through it?
Writing Prompts for Social Awareness
- How can you show respect for someone even if you don’t personally agree with something they are doing?
- You see a student you don’t know very well off to the side of the playground. You are having a good time with your friends and don’t really want to stop, but you know that something is wrong with that student. What do you do? Write a story about this. Include what you said when you approached that student, how you worked through their difficulty, and how the story ended.
- You are at your favorite store with a few friends. But then out of the corner of your eye, you see someone steal something and stuff it in their backpack. What do you do? How does the whole story play out?
- You have been asked to help feed the homeless this Saturday at your local homeless shelter. How do you feel about this? Afraid? Uninterested? Excited? Nervous? Explain how you feel it would go and how it would work out if you actually did this.
- Talk about an experience you had that you needed a super amount of courage. Make sure to talk about the before, during and after circumstances.
Writing Prompts for Relationship Skills
- What do you do when a friend wants to borrow your prized possession and you don’t really feel like sharing. Write a story based on what your favorite item is, how you got it, when your friend asked for it, and how you worked it out. This doesn’t have to be a real story. Feel free to invent a story.
- What would you do if there was a new person at school? Would you work past the fear to introduce yourself and get to know them? Write a story about how you could meet a new person that would eventually become your best friend.
- How do you feel about working in teams or groups at school? Write a story about what your favorite group project would look like, and how each member of the group would interact throughout the project.
- Tell a story about how you could show empathy to a fellow student that is really sad.
- Write a story about how you could show empathy to another student that has been disruptive and angry in class and on the playground.
- You have a friend that you don’t know very well, but you would really like to become better friends with them. What things could you do to get to know them better?
- How could you share yourself in a way that is genuine and relational?
- When you are not getting along with a friend, what things can you do and say to help get things back on track for you?
Writing Prompts for Responsible Decision-making
- Recount a story about a time that you were proud of yourself for making a good decision when it was a really difficult decision to make.
- Talk about what kinds of decisions are really hard for you to make. How do you get help to make them? Whose help do you enlist to do this?
- Are you an organized person? If not, write about what steps you would take to get more organized in your “perfect world.” If you are organized, talk about the steps you took that got you there.
- When you see a problem that someone else is having, do you step in to help, or do you stay back and wait to be asked to help? Talk about the pros and cons of both of these options. And if you have an experience to share regarding this, talk about what you did and if it was the right decision. And also talk about how you would do it next time.
- Sometimes it is very difficult to ask for help because we want to be seen as independent. Talk about good ways to ask for help and why we really need to at times. And talk about the benefits of giving and receiving help.
Bonus
There are tons of great writing prompts listed already, but this video is one of the best I have seen and so short that you can add it at the beginning of your writing/journaling class or when assigning homework. It is only a little over a minute long. But it is packed full of social emotional wisdom for your students! You can watch it with them and then assign any one of the concepts it shows you. I wish I had this resource a long time ago! Just click on the video to watch:
Although the video specifically states that it is for teens, the concepts are actually still perfect for middle schoolers or even upper elementary. I would love to hear how it worked in your classroom. let me know in the comments!
Conclusion
This is what I have for writing prompts for social emotional learning for now. Honestly, I probably could have come up with about a hundred more. Once I got started there were so many more thoughts I had. I will be expanding this list over time, so make sure to bookmark this article for future reference! In the meantime, don’t forget to check out my other writing prompts posts, Writing Prompts that Combat Bullying and Most Creative Middle School Writing Prompts.
If you liked this article, I think you will also like the following related articles:
Writing Prompts That Combat Bullying
Most Creative Middle School Writing Prompts
How to Teach Students to Summarize the Right Way
Why Social Emotional Skills are so Important in Middle School
10 Perfect Picture Books to Teach Middle Schoolers
Social Emotional Intellingence: Some are Free!
Self-Care Books for Middle Schoolers
These are very valuable writing prompts for a very important growth stage. When our kids are going through this they are learning and often confused with all of the emotions, it is a great time to reflect and get it out on paper.
So true, Adrienne! If we can get them talking, we can help them out!
My kids need these writing prompts. I can see it hard for them that they cant see their friends
This is incredibly hard on kids! I hope the writing prompts help out.
I didn’t knew about this writing promps. It looks like they can be very helpful in managing emotions.
I love your list of writing prompts. I can even use the list for my own personal assessment, in a way that it will be relatable, of course.
These are wonderful ideas to help teach this to young people. It is so powerful to be able to support others through the process of becoming more emotionally intelligent and be able to know how to communicate those feelings. These lessons are something that will benefit them for their whole lives!
Yes, they will Tessa!
These prompts are so wonderful for young people, they’re definitely a great teaching aid. I’ll be sure to pin this for others to check out!
Thank you, Krysten! ♥
Love to read the social emotional learnings! You have described very well these 5 components of social emotional learning… These are also useful for respected teachers and students.
Thank you, Teerath.
I have always found these activities formative for the group and the individual. Treating emotions as a topic of study and sharing is also beautiful.
Thank you, Cristina! And you are right, they are good for groups, individuals, families, schools, literally anyone.
I’ve never heard of this type of learning before, I don’t think they have it in England and if that’s the case, they should definitely try implementing it as it looks incredibly important for a child’s wellbeing
Emotional health and well being is so important, more so now than I ever think it was when I was a kind. These exercises would have helped me so much as a child and teenager. I grew up being told that I’m over emotional which lead to the opposite effect in adulthood which we all know is a dangerous thing.
I have seen the same damage done to kids in America. I am glad things are turning around worldwide!
this is very beneficial !!! to talk about emotional health and wellness to help kids in dealing with challenging issues.
thank you so much for pouring your heart out into this post! we need these. our kids need these as well. it’s really great to invest in our emotional health. Thanks for this one!
Thank you, Cha!
I love these writing prompts. It teaches the kids a lot. It helps learn how to deal with their emotions which is very important. I wish I had these in my growing years. We had to deal with all our emotions on our own.
I wish the same, Priya. It would have made early adult life so much easier.
These are great writing prompts for kids who are stuck at home. A little introspection never hurts.
These look like some great writing prompts for students! I like a lot of these topics. It’s so important to talk about feelings.
Very interesting and thought provoking writing prompts! I know they will be helpful to many!!
Love these writing prompts. Thanks for sharing
These are writing prompts that are applicable even to adults. Looking forward to the add ons on this list.
These writing prompts are essential in improving writing skills and helps stimulate the mind of the students, get them excited about sharing their thoughts and ideas. Nice topics you shared here.
These are really good writing prompts for those who have writer’s block especially. It is also a way to put your feelings down so that they do not eat you up inside.
Very true, Joanne. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
Ooh!! I really like these prompts. I refer to these as prompts for deep meaningful conversations aka DMCs. It is the one thing I do enjoy doing rather than spending time talking about random stuff. By the way, these are also great questions for couples.😜
I agree. I was thinking they were good for my whole family! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Alvern!
These are definitely great for overcoming writer’s block. Writing is another way to let out steam which keeps building inside on a daily basis
I don’t teach adults or kids who can write these (I teach preschool) but these make absolutely great journal prompts! I am going to use them for my daily journal!
I love that these prompts encourage children to really dig into themselves, their feelings and their relationships. These are important topics that they are just learning about as they grow and evolve. I think the writing prompts you shared here are SO valuable!
Thank you, Britt!
These are great. I think this is really important.
Great article for self awareness and growth! congrats!
Personal essays are such a great way to help children develop their emotional behaviors and understand more about themselves.
it is great to know that prompts encourage children to express themselves. thanks for sharing this amazing article.
I’m actually taking a writing class in a couple of weeks!
I would love to take a writing class! Enjoy!
These are really great writing prompts!! what a crazy time we’re living in.
Indeed. I hope the crazy turns back into somewhat boring soon!
These are some really positive writing prompts we could all use right now, thanks for sharing, going to use some myself this week
Laura x
You are right, Laura. While I originally wrote it for middle school students, it didn’t take too long to realize how good they are for everyone. Thank you for your thoughts.
I was answering each question in my head as I was reading. Really got me thinking, thanks for sharing!
I always do the same thing! Thanks for reading. ♥
YES!!! I have read this book. I like your writing prompts for SEL. I am a Responsive Classroom teacher so SEL is at the front and center. I have been doing SEL checks in my “virtual” morning messages too just to make sure I am checking in during this difficult time. I bookmarked this page to refer back to. Thanks so much!
I never knew about writing prompts. Great article, I can implement some of these for myself.
I think those are great prompts. It makes them think about it a bit and perhaps process their feelings.
This is an important suject, especially now ehrn the kids cant see their friends 🙂
These are great writing prompts for kids to keep them busy during this pandemic.
Writing prompts are a great idea for those at school but can also help adults too especially if they have a block x
These are all amazing prompts. Some of which I should definitely implement. I love how detailed you are.
Wow! I feel like I could use ALL these writing prompts at 40. Which probably makes the case that I never had them as a student and probably should have. LOL. Great introspective thinking.
These prompts are all great! Thank u for sharing
I too believe that writing prompts reinforce social emotional skills. Writing prompts for relationship building and decision making would be very useful for children st an early age.
Wow, this is a brilliant piece of writing. When we ask questions this way, we can figure out our weaknesses and strengths in a much better way.
Nice post and I do love your tips about doing a writing prompts. I will definitely share this with my nephew’s and nieces to help them making their own piece.
I trully loved and enjoyed this post and it gave me an idea to get the teen involved in writing one for herself as i believe it could be hugely beneficial kind regards Pati Robins @ style squeeze blog
Good ideas for writing prompts. Will suggest them to my son. Very helpful article. It will be helpful for the young people to rack their brains and bring about innovativeness in their writing spree.
I love your idea of the emotional prompts. You should start a blog for emotionally prompting adults not just junior high kids.lol! These emotional problems are perfect for kids and adults.
those are some great prompts. and some are really deep and probing. I wonder how the students would feel knowing it’s being critiqued and graded and if that’d effect their openness.
Great tips on writing prompts! I’ll share these to my friends. They might find it useful.
These are all valuable tips about writing prompts. Thanks for sharing!
These are great writing prompts.i would love to write them down for my son
I hope that you all enjoy doing them and reading the results!
Great tips! Writing is a very powerful source of understanding of yourself and deepening you grounding
Great post about writing prompts. Self-awareness is indeed a very important aspect of our life.
I love the way your present the writing prompts here. But what I love more is the concept of “Self Awareness”. On this note, I can fully surrender my writing skills when I understand and get myself aware on capability. Thanks for sharing your post.
Thank you, Papa!
That was an amazing prompts. Kids will love this especially this days. Thanks for sharing your ideas.
Social and emotional skills are foundational for kids to be successful in and out of the classroom. They involve everything: having a firm grasp of our values, recognizing our strengths and challenges, understanding social situations, developing strong relationships with others, managing our emotions, making responsible decisions, and so much more.
Exactly, Monidipa! Thank you for sharing your thoughts.
I loved this and bookmarked it so that I can use it when I need! Social emotional skills aree indeed the fundamental for kids,
Wow! I think that social learning is one of the most important types of learning there can be. These prompts are great!
Thank you, Jessie!
This should really be reinforced. Nice practice for kids nowadays who keep on isolating themselves.
These are some great writing prompts to reinforce social emotional learning. This is perfect for kids for the to keep for entertained and busy during this pandemic.
That sounds amazing and quite helpful indeed. These are all wonderful writing prompts and great activity to be busy during quarantine