Member resources

Here we have a collection of resources for primary school work on self-awareness and emotion regulation (relevant to the Good to be Me SEAL theme)

A PSHE lesson on healthy coping strategies for maintaining positive mental health.

This is a nice idea for primary back to school class bonding,  or any work on identity. It comes from @MissFMackenzie on Twitter. Pupils created their island shaped in the initial of their name.

These fabulous free resources come from the Tower Hamlets Oracy Hub and Tower Hamlets Education Partnership.

This is our collection of top emotion check-ins – thirteen different ways for children to show how they are feeling at points during the day

We at the SEAL Community have put together this progression in words for feelings.to teach - from the early years to Year 7. We hope you find it useful!

This is a booklet of short activities to promote wellbeing, for children (primary and secondary) to use at school or at home-  mindfulness, gratitude etc

This brilliant secondary lesson (badged as for KS4 but could be earlier) helps students explore their sense of identity .

This is a secondary lesson with a useful video on understanding emotions - how the brain works , how to respond to different emotions.

This is a nice lesson from the Bounce Forward secondary curriculum.

This provides instructions and readings for a writing exercise that helps pupils see exam stress as a positive that can help them perform at their best. Could be used before GCSEs or SATs.

This is a useful resource, kindly made available by Dr Pooky Knightsmith, to help children who are anxious about school understand their feelings and move forward.

There are two lovely copiables in this primary resource- a 'hand' for children to record who they can reach out to when they need to talk, and a Reach Out Rainbow for them to colour in segments of,

Here we have a list and links for the best of the resources for Good to be me/Learning about me that we have added to the SEALwebsite to complement the original national SEAL resources.

Social Story framework to use with primary children to help them remember what they should do when they are about to ‘lose it’.

This is a nice lesson idea from Voice 21 for primary pupil, combining oracy with work on understanding and managing feelings. Childen can work in pairs on the activities...

Three early years sessions based on an online reading of ‘Happy: A Children’s Book of Mindfulness’

Templates using the concept of superheroes to encourage children to explore their own super powers, qualities and talents. There are resources for ages 4-5, 5-7 and 7-11

These Australian resources are packed with 15-30 minute interactive lessons on understanding and managing feelings, valuing personal strengths, coping strategies, seeking help, assertiveness, stres

These Australian resources are packed with 15-30 minute interactive lessons on understanding and managing feelings, valuing personal strengths, coping strategies, seeking help, assertiveness, stres

Really good lesson materials for Y6, from Public Health England on wellbeing (self-care).

This set of mental health resources from the Anna Freud Centre is for  9-11 year olds . There is an animation which you will find here

Here we have:

 a lesson based on the book a Huge Bag of Worries

an anxiety thermometer from the Anna Freud Centre  - useful for 1-1 work with children

Here we have:

A nice resource sheet for Reception/KS1 - helping the Colour Monster fill jars by drawing or writing things that make the child feel certain emotions

Some fabulous Colour Monster self regulation tools , for primary children to use to identify how they are feeling

A simple daily emotion tracker for primary, from the Anna Freud Centre. Can be used to help children identify and scale their feelings over the course of a week, at different times of the day and in different situations. .

This is a collection of resources on the theme of confidence.

For primary we have

- A self-belief assembly

- 'Superhero me': a resource that helps children think about their strengths

- A rebuild and recover resource to use with individual children to help them reframe negative thoughts

For primary and secondary there is:

-A 'challenging unhelpful thoughts' resource, again focused on overcoming negativity

-A really useful seven-session plan for 1-1 work with students who lack confidence

From Place2Be we have a series of assembly and lesson resources focusing on community recovery and helping you to bring your school back together. The resources are split into four themes (self-efficacy, hope, gratitude and connectedness), with each drawing upon some of the factors that underpin emotional wellbeing and resilience.

Then there is a  five-step exercise on identity and belonging helps secondary students appreciate differences—in themselves and in their peers. It was developed by Shana White- thank you, Shana

You will really like these! Class DoJo have partnered with Yale, Stanford, and Harvard universities to create some really useful primary videos, discussion guides, and activities where students will:

• Manage powerful emotions through mindfulness

• Tackle self-talk and positive thinking

• Learn how to take on big challenges

• Explore moods and attitudes

• Discover the power of growth mindset

Find them at

https://ideas.classdojo.com/

You just need to create an account first if you haven't got one.

We’ve uploaded a batch of new resources to the SEAL website:

 The pick of the best COVID19 resources form Mentally Healthy Schools: a sentence starters sheet primary children can use to about feelings and hopes, an emotional check-in sheet for older children , an anxiety thermometer for 1-1 or small group work, an emotion wheel for primary children to make and use, a lovely primary Self Care Kit to send home to help children manage stress , a delightful early years/KS1 relax like a cat Relax leaflet relaxation exercise

There is

- a nice activity for any age group on what can keep us going when things are tough

- a ‘3 good things’ primary and secondary activity on positive thinking

- a nice ’balancing act’ activity and ‘find your balance ‘ image , also focused on staying positive

- a printable worksheet, best used in small groups or 1-1 settings. Pupils must finish the sentences ‘I am, I can, I have’, to help them talk about positive features in themselves

- a secondary lesson about resilience, with film clips and emoticon counters for a snakes and ladders game

This toolkit from Mentally Healthy Schools has primary activities, lesson plans and assembly plans to help children to think about who they are as a person, recognise what they are good at, identify positive things about themselves, learn from their experiences and set goals.

One 20-30 minute activity helps encourage staff and pupils to think about their aspirations for the year ahead, especially in relation to mental health and wellbeing.

Secondary colleagues just go here to find a fabulous presentation for parents about exam stress, http://sealcommunity.org/member-resource/fabulous-presentation and here for work with young people themselves http://sealcommunity.org/member-resource/exam-stress-lessons-and-tutor-…

There’s less about for primary children, so we’ve put these ideas together, prompted by a Year 5 grandson who wrote this comment in his maths book about a maths test ‘I crack under pressure during tests’.

Step 1 Start early

Why should adults get all the self-help books? There are also lovely reads and activities for youngsters who need some extra support to feel relaxed, mindful, grateful, inspired and happy. Have a look at this selection of 13 books to children feel more calm and mindful, at https://www.booktrust.org.uk/booklists/c/calming-mindfulness/

For secondary students, follow these links to find a couple of useful True Tube films about stress and feeling down KS3 https://www.truetube.co.uk/film/stress-bag?tab=film KS3 and 4 https://www.truetube.co.uk/film/feeling-down?tab=film

First we have a great Science lesson on resilience and depression. The lesson, from the MindFull organisation, opens with Matthew Johnstone’s moving animation I had a black dog, his name is depression, before exploring the genetic forces at work in those who suffer from it. The lesson tackles the stigma of mental health by presenting a series of true or false statements (“Stress is a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened” and “The only things you can be addicted to are drugs and alcohol”),followed by a class discussion.

In this selection we have first Massonet's meditation - a brilliant set of slides with music on a loop, to help children learn to become calm and focus. It could be used in an assembly or lesson starter. The images and music are interspersed with snippets of information.The file must be viewed in slideshow mode to hear the music. It was created by PWilloughby – thank you!

These resources help children develop empathy. For primary schools there is a link to a Sesame Street film illustrating what empathy means, a lovely lesson called Empathy in a shoe box, and a Pass the Face circle activity to help children read social cues. There's an Empathy prints cut-out for literacy or history ( contributed to TES website by Temperance - thank you): students explore how a character might be feeling by imagining they are in their shoes and fill in the shoe outlines.

The review begins with an evaluation of whether the model of emotional intelligence (EI) proposed by Goleman (1996), on which the SEAL programme is based constitutes a valid and useful construct for educationalists. 

Concluding, on the basis of the take-up of the SEAL programme in schools that it does, it then evaluates the evidence as to whether social and emotional skills are correlated with attainment, and asks whether such skills can be successfully taught.