Welcome to the SEAL community!
Social and emotional learning helps children and young people to:
‘… learn how to communicate their feelings, set themselves goals and work towards them, interact successfully with others, resolve conflicts peaceably, control their anger and negotiate their way through the many complex relationships in their lives today and tomorrow’.
This kind of learning underpins positive behaviour and attitudes to learning, personal development and mental health and wellbeing. It is at the heart of PSHE, relationships and health education.
Research shows it also helps raise attainment. Social and emotional learning is attracting increasing attention in schools. On this website you will find age-related teaching resources and whole school frameworks to support your work.
Many of them come from the national ‘Social and emotional Learning’ (SEAL) initiative. By registering with us (which is free, quick and easy), you can immediately find and download all of the national SEAL curriculum materials and teacher guidance. There’s a progression in learning objectives that can be used in any school, and training materials if you want to introduce or refresh a whole-school SEAL approach. Click on National Resources then click the Getting Started with SEAL tab.
If you would like regularly updated teaching resources, you can also join our SEAL Community. Set up and supported by leading experts in the field, the SEAL Community is a not-for-profit organisation which aims to promote and develop SEAL through sharing news, practice, resources and expertise. Joining costs £30 for individuals, £75 for schools/settings and £100 for local authorities or other multi-school organisations. Click here to join
News update
Now in its fifth year, Now and Beyond is a national online festival for educational settings. It equips educators with the tools they need to facilitate difficult conversations on subjects that confront them every day, including resilience, self harm, and suicidal ideation.
Empathy Week runs from 10th–14th March and bookings for some live in-person events are now open. Even if you’ve taken part before, you’ll need to register again to access the free resources ....
2-12 June 2025 will be a ten-day nationwide Empathy Festival , culminating in the annual Empathy Day itself on 12 June. The festival will feature ...
An analysis by the Children’s Society reveals the UK is at the bottom of European rankings in terms of life satisfaction across 27 nations.
Sharing practice
Thornbury Primary have thought long and hard about how to make sure every child can talk to an adult if they need to.
Most children are happy to share their thoughts and feelings openly, but all classrooms have worry boxes ...
Four secondary schools in Torfaen in Wales developed a great project some years ago to ease transition to secondary school for students identified as at potential risk of exclusion. Two of the schools recorded no Y7 exclusions for the year following the project, and the rest showed reduced exclusions in Y7 when compared to the previous three years.
Each year, staff at Exminster Primary ran a series of five weekly Family SEAL sessions for new Reception class parents. The format was an adult session immediately followed by time for adults and children to undertake activities together.
Resource roundup
Practical tools
This is a good KS2/3 activity to help students develop a wide vocabulary for feelings. Make a space on the wall for a graph with two axes intersecting in the middle (like a + sign). Label the left-hand end UNPLEASANT and the right-hand end PLEASANT. Label the top INTENSE and the bottom MILD...
If your school can find £1200 we think a good investment would be two days of groupwork with the organisation Progressive Masculinity . Mike Nicholson and his team provide brilliant workshops for groups of boys – they suggest focusing on the older ones and the leaders/peer influencers first. Here is a sample of their activities/discussion questions.
Leah Kuypers, who devised the very popular Zones of Regulation, has some advice on using the Zones in the early years.
New research
Empathy Studios have worked with Cambridge University to evaluate the impact of its work in ten schools, with 900 students. The evaluation found that teachers reported higher student empathy and improved behaviour at the end of a five week programme.
Social isolation and reduced access to services may have brought the experiences of traditionally advantaged groups closer
Top resource
Realy useful emotion wheel for classroom work on identifying and naming different feelings . Use it as a poster or on the whiteboard.
My Life on Fire by Cath How is a great book to use in upper KS2 to discuss and develop empathy.
We loved these sheep memes, to use in emotion check-ins ...