We’re always excited to see the plethora of social-emotional learning (SEL) activities that teachers and parents are incorporating in their classrooms and homes. If you’re not familiar with SEL, we highly recommend checking out these 13 activities from Summit Preparatory Charter High School in Redwood City, California. They are fantastic. We’ll include a few more resources at the end of this article.
We’d like to offer how all social-emotional learning can be enhanced using emotional intelligence. These techniques are helpful for teachers and parents alike.
How to Improve Your Social-Emotional Learning Activities
Emotional intelligence (EQ) is a crucial factor in social-emotional learning. We define EQ as learning to be more intelligent about your emotions and then using your emotions to unlock your intelligence. But also, EQ can be expanded into three additional areas.
Social-Emotional Agility – ability to accurately identify what you feel, when you’re feeling it in real-time, while also determining the appropriate time to respond.
Social-Emotional Responsibility – knowing how things got to where they are, how each party contributed to the outcome, and how to respond with appropriate responsibility.
Social Maturity – achieving self-concept awareness and knowing who we are, who we want to be, and with whom we want to be ourselves with.
Adding EQ to Any Social-Emotional Learning Activity
Using the above framework, we recommend merely debriefing any SEL activity with four questions designed to increase emotional intelligence.
What did you feel during that activity?
When have you felt that before?
How did you handle it?
Who do you see yourself as in those emotions?
For the first question, ensure the student uses emotional vocabulary—the more robust the emotion, the better. Using emotional vocabulary is the first step to develop EQ. The next question connects the emotion to the rest of their lives, which will assist with self-awareness and regulation. Asking how they handled the emotion is the initial act of self-responsibility through acknowledgment. Don’t just how they respond—accept it to create psychological safety. By asking these three questions, you’re helping the child develop new neural pathways to social-emotional skills that can be easier to access at later times.
The last question may seem strange or out of place. It’s hard by design. Asking an identity-based question will cause the student to exercise their prefrontal cortex, which will stimulate the highest executive functions of the brain. We know the prefrontal cortex does not fully develop until the age of 25 (some claim it takes longer), but that does not mean we can’t exercise it for optimum development.
EQ Beyond the Social-Emotional Learning Activity
Here’s where these four questions get exciting. Once students are comfortable with them, you can now ask them to develop EQ beyond an SEL activity. Do it during an emotional or stressful moment, or as part of a reflection exercise like journaling.
The fundamental questions are (we dare you to try them on yourself, or let someone ask you first):
What do you feel and what do you think? (Ensure they answer in that order and use emotional vocabulary.)
When have you felt and thought this before?
How did you, or could you handle it?
Who do you see yourself as in all of this?
These questions can be adjusted depending on the situation—teachers are good at it, and parents can learn. Just remember that by asking them in order, you are exercising different parts of the brain to strengthen the prefrontal cortex with emotional intelligence.
These are coaching EQ strategies we use to teach social-emotional performance for individuals and organizations around the world. Instead of SEL, we ask them after training or workshop activities. Wherever you work, or whatever SEL activity you do, don’t forget to debrief with these EQ-based questions. Try it and see what happens.
Additional Social-Emotional Learning Activities
Centervention has a fabulous library for SEL activities, including free lessons and downloads.
This article by Aperture Education has some great ideas on how to teach core subjects as SEL activities.
We Make EQ Games for Social-Emotional Learning Activities
YouEQ combines game dynamics and brain science into something we call “neuro-gamification.” If you’re interested in a free demo or attending a free training, check out our upcoming events. If you’re a teacher at an accredited school, we have a free program for you. And if you’re just interested in learning more about emotional intelligence, check out our free EQ mini-course.
Finally, to learn more about the brain science mentioned in this article, Ed Kang, creator of YouEQ neuro-gamification, wrote his book The Qortex Circuit: Train Your Brain for Joy and Transformation, just for you.