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
A new report from the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) provides evidence that some common assumptions about what works in promoting wellbeing and preventing mental health difficulties may in fact be based on myths, or partial myths...
Around a third of schools and colleges in England will be offered part-funding to train a senior mental health lead from their staff in the new school year, to develop a whole school approach to wellbeing...
In Wales the Minister for Mental Health and the Minister for Education have made £9m available for 2021-22 to support whole-school work in promoting emotional and mental health....
Next year's Empathy Day will be on Thursday 9 June 2022...
In a survey of over 3000 secondary students by the Anna Freud Centre, just over half of respondents identified at least one adult in school who they would talk to if they were worried about their mental health or that of another pupil, but 47.8% said they wouldn’t speak to anyone in school. The younger the children were, the less likely they were to speak to an adult at school.
Sharing practice
Try this with your new primary class., to create a sense of belonging...
At Billesley Primary in Birmingham staff noticed that after the school closures children were struggling to interact with each other in class...
Miss Greenwood at Boothroyd Primary Academy uses the Colour Monster story and Measure My Mood feeling cards with her early years class, to explore how feelings can escalate...
Adrian Bethune of Teachappy has described fantastic work on kindness at John Stainer primary school in London. Kindness is a super-power, children were told.
Meath is a special school in Surrey that caters for children with speech, language and communication difficulties. In this year’s national children’s mental health week, the focus was on the theme ‘Dress to Express’. On Thursday the children and staff were invited to wear bright colours or outfits that made them feel happy.
Resource roundup
The hare-shaped hole by John and Thomas Docherty is one to use if a class member has experienced bereavement.
We’ve featured these before but just as a reminder, do look at Beano’s KS1 and 2 resources on understanding and managing emotions
In case you haven’t see them, we’d also like to flag up the National Literacy Trust’s lovely primary wellbeing resources
Practical tools
New research
In 2003 and 2004, a team of researchers implemented a year-long social and emotional learning (SEL) intervention with 192 children in 22 classrooms
Longitudinal research shows that teachers significantly impact the long-term physical and mental health of their pupils.
Experiencing maltreatment in childhood can have a lasting impact on how individuals identify, understand, and experience emotions.