Many students may already use a journal at school to develop their writing skills, but what if we helped them express their feelings in a space that’s their own with a Social Emotional Learning Journal?
Keeping a journal is a terrific way to express emotions in a safe way, and with this social emotional learning journal, your students can add free-form entries, work from SEL journal prompts, or use the structured worksheets below:
- Cover Sheet: The first worksheet is a cover page that students can decorate and make their own
- All About Me: Step one for their journal is an All About Me worksheet
- My Favorites: As an additional worksheet, students can identify their favorite things, places, activities, etc.
- Acts of Kindness: Brainstorm ways to show kindness
- Self Affirmations: Students identify beliefs they have about themselves and write affirmation cards to create a positive mindset. You may want to use these Positive Affirmations for Kids as prompts for your students or as an opener for your daily/weekend meetings
- Emotional Check In Worksheet: Use this worksheet to help you better understand how your students are feeling, things they miss, and things they are looking forward to
- Worry Scale: This worksheet can be used as a group exercise to help students identify sources of anxiety and develop coping strategies
- Setting Goals: These worksheets will help your students create plans to achieve their goals
- Would You Rather: Worksheets that ask a series of would you rather questions (great to use as an icebreaker).
- Anger Thermometer: A worksheet to help student understand and cope with the different degrees of anger.
We will add new worksheets and lessons to the list above during the year, so please bookmark and recheck this page.
Additional Resources
Books
- Start Where You Are: A Journal for Self-Exploration
- Me and My Feelings: A Kids’ Guide to Understanding and Expressing Themselves by NBCT Vanessa Green Allen, M.Ed.
- Anxious Ninja: A Children’s Book About Managing Anxiety and Difficult Emotions by Mary Nhin and Jelena Stupar