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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

Get started with SEAL

Register or join the SEAL Community here

Whats new

Building social and emotional learning into everyday subject lessons checklist and prompts

Tech Attack

Sharing the Zones of Regulation with parents – an early years case study

News update

Off-rolling soars

More schools are 'off-rolling' weak pupils a few months before their GCSE exams in an attempt to protect overall results, according to a report ‘Suspending Reality’ ...

More than half young people say school pressures are affecting their mental health

‘School is too much pressure’. More than half of young people taking part in a survey identified school as a contributing factor to poor mental health, including factors such as the stress, worry and fear they experienced in school, as well as ...

Wellbeing Advent Calendars

Young Minds have released their latest wellbing Advent Calendars, for pupils and staff. Really useful . Find them here

World Kindness Day November 13th

Don't miss these primary assembly and teaching resources for World Kindness Day, developed by the National Literacy Trust in partnership with Pengion Random House and Charlie Mackesy, author of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. Find them at ...

Antidepressant prescriptions for teens hit 1m a year for first time

According to NHS figures, the number of antidepressant prescriptions being given to GPs has now exceeded one million per year.

Sharing practice

What does a classroom built around social emotional learning really look like?

At Parkway Elementary School it looks like this..

A totally brilliant idea – the Human Library at Ladybridge High School in Bolton

Ladybridge High School have created a distinctive approach to personal development, in which learners can elect to visit the ‘Human Library’ during weekly 30-minute personal development time...

How to stress like a champion

How about a cross-curricular module on stress, taking it beyond just PSHE? This is what they’ve done at an American high school...

The size of the problem

Anna Parker, an elementary school teacher at Lister Elementary School in Tacoma, Washington, asks students to rate problems on a scale from 1 to 5, and reflect on what sort of response each problem merits. Students discuss ...

The Zen Den

More and more primaries are creating calm-down corners where children can independently take themselves when they need to self-regulate. But is it really possible to have spaces like these in secondary schools? This US school suggests it is ...

Resource roundup

Free assessment tools

Julie Casey, one of our founders, has kindly made available for free a full set of SEAL assessment tools, in the form of an overall progression in SEL skills and booklets of ‘I can’ statements ....

Prompts and checklist to help teachers bring SEL into their planning units of work and lessons

Are you looking for ways to help your colleagues build social and emotional learning into subject lessons? These two resources from CASEL, the US centre for all things SEL, will be useful

JET Inspired

JET Inspired is the Jon Egging Trust’s free resource hub for schools and teachers. The hub has engaging video content and free-to-download teaching resources and offers a privileged behind-the-scenes look at the working world of the Red Arrows.

New books for Good to be Me

Geoffrey gets the jitters and three other great books ..Dragons on the Inside for big feelings , I'm Happy-Sad Today for mixed feelings, and Maybe: A Story about the Endless Potential in All of Us by Kobi Yamada

Self-regulation for students with learning difficulties

Healthy Mind is an online Easy Read tool from Australia, designed to help older students with learning difficulties to recognise and regulate their thoughts and feelings. It includes five online learning modules ...

Practical tools

Using entry and exit tickets for emotion check-ins

One of the easiest ways for teachers to incorporate mental health check-ins with their students is to rethink the way they use their entry and exit tickets.

Can we use AI in social and emotional learning?

Try using ChatGPT to create lesson plans aligned to specific incidents or student needs.

Jigsaw

Teaching children how to work together in groups is a big part of SEAL, as is promoting a sense of belonging in the class group. Using the Jigsaw technique will do both, helping learners get to know others outside their friendship group. Have a look at...

Tackling the attendance problem

Everyone is talking about the post-COVID increase in attendance problems, and we’ve been thinking about the contribution that social and emotional learning can make to tackling the issue – particularly by creating a sense of belonging in school. You can read ...

When is banter OK? When is it not OK?

Have your students work in groups to come up with their on criteria for deciding whether something is banter, and when it might actually be bullying. Use these sentence stems:

New research

Boys more affected by lockdowns

Teenage boys were hit hardest by the Covid lockdowns, with their mental health not recovering despite the return to 'normality', according to the most comprehensive academic study of its kind. Previously, it was thought girls were worst affected by the pandemic.

Looks are the biggest focus of bullying

A survey of 2,594 primary students (aged 7 to 11) and 2145 secondary students , carried out by the organisation Embracing D

Empathy transmission through generations

This new research shows that parents who express empathy toward their teenagers may give teens a head start in developing the skill themselves. In addition, adolescents who show empathy and support toward their friends are more likely to become supportive parents, which may foster empathy in their own offspring.

Social and Emotional Skills for Better Lives: Findings from the OECD Survey on Social and Emotional Skills 2023

The Survey on Social and Emotional Skills (SSES) is an international survey designed to improve our understanding of students’ social and emotional skills, including how these skills relate to key life outcomes. Sixteen sites, including six countries, took part in SSES 2023 - Bulgaria, Chile, Peru, Spain, Mexico, Ukraine, Bogotá (Colombia), Delhi (India), Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Emilia-Romagna (Italy), Gunma (Japan), Helsinki (Finland), Jinan (China), Kudus (Indonesia), Sobral (Brazil) and Turin (Italy). Guess what? The UK declined to take part

Which components of SEL make most difference?

Social-emotional learning (SEL) programs generally yield positive outcomes for students, and can enhance academic performance and reduce conduct problems. Shi and Cheung conducted a comprehensive and rigorous meta-analysis to identify program components that significantly impact SEL effectiveness across four domains: social-emotional skills, affect and attitudes, prosocial and antisocial behaviours, and academic performance.

Top resource

We've Got This! Six steps to build your empathy superpower

We love this new book for children from EmpathyLab. Written by Rashmi Sirdeshpande, with stunning illustrations from Juliana Eigner, it gives young people concrete, fun, accessible ways to practice and build their empathy skills.

Really useful (we hope)

We’ve created three new resources, to support work on self-awareness/self-regulation - A progression in vocabulary for describing emotions – words to teach from EYFS through to Year 7 - Twenty simple exercises to help children stay calm – a collection of breathing and relaxation exercises, with instructions and video links - Top emotion check-ins – thirteen different ways for children to show how they are feeling at points during the day