7 SEL Activities for High School Students

Do you ever think back to your high school years? As students get closer to senior year, they often feel pressured to make plans for their future—whether that’s going to college or planning for a career in a specific field. It can be daunting to know that at 18 years old, they are legally considered adults and soon will be expected to be financially and socially independent. As their teacher, you are another important figure in their lives who can help them envision their long-term goals.

SEL core competencies

How can you ensure your high school students feel secure and confident enough to face whatever the world may throw at them? The answer is to help them discover their passions while teaching them to be empathetic and self-confident at the same time. Social and emotional learning (SEL) can be used to achieve this goal.

Promoting SEL for high school students helps them develop the tools necessary to manage workloads and extracurricular obligations, set and achieve goals, navigate social dynamics, and more. According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), there are five core SEL competencies that make up the framework:

• Self-awareness: Recognizing one’s emotions and their effect on behavior
• Self-management: Regulating emotions, thoughts, and behaviors to achieve goals
• Responsible decision-making: Making good choices and evaluating consequences
• Relationship skills: Developing positive relationships; resolving conflicts constructively
• Social awareness: Empathizing with others and understanding their perspectives, including those from diverse backgrounds

The skills listed above are critical to success both in and out of the classroom. Through social and emotional learning, high school students become better prepared for all aspects of their lives.

Social-emotional learning activities for high school

Here are five SEL activities for high school, with an emphasis on reading and writing. These activities are based on the CASEL framework to help you support students in their path to becoming independent contributors to society.

1. Self-awareness

Students need to develop their interests and find a sense of purpose. Assigning a writing prompt with an anonymous peer review is a great way to get students thinking about themselves with an authentic audience in mind. This writing prompt and graphic organizer from the A Chance in the World collection in Writable will help students reflect on their lives by answering this question: How do teenagers form their identity?

2. Self-management

This competency is the quintessential emotional intelligence students need to be successful and self-confident. The key is to remind students to focus on their skills (and not their perceived deficiencies) to set meaningful goals and have the self-motivation and self-discipline needed to achieve them.

Help students reflect on the importance of self-management by having them write a few paragraphs in response to this prompt: What internal qualities or external supports have helped you accept new challenges and adjust to change?

3. Responsible decision-making

This competency involves making personal and social choices related to ethics, safety, and social norms, as well as considering the consequences of those choices. Skills related to this competency involve analyzing situations, recognizing and solving problems, and evaluating ethical responsibility. Students can develop their decision-making skills by completing the following writing prompt that allows them to help others make responsible choices: Think about some questions your friends or classmates might ask about relationships, personal goals, school, or family. Then list the questions and write an advice column in response.

4. Social awareness

Help students understand that other people have different perspectives and are worthy of respect. Social awareness includes having empathy for others and appreciating diversity. These skills center around listening and working to understand other people.

Literary analysis is a great tool for teaching students about different points of view and empathy. Help students internalize feelings of empathy with this prompt: How can fiction shape our view of ourselves?

5. Relationship skills

Strengthening social relationships is important for all of us as it leads to living a longer and more fulfilling life. This writing prompt and graphic organizer from the A Chance in the World collection will help students analyze some of their closest relationships: How can you strengthen ties with family members?

More SEL activities for high school across competencies

Here are two additional activities that can help students develop the skills they need to become self-assured and successful in their careers and lives.

1. Building resilience

In this activity, students will learn about resilience and how to build it in their own lives. Ask your students to think of a time when they faced a challenge. How did they feel in that moment? What did they do to face the challenge? Did they give up or keep going? Why do you think they made the choice that they did? After they’ve had a chance to think about their own experience, have them share with a partner. Discuss different ways that they could’ve faced the challenge and how that might’ve changed the outcome. Help them to understand that it’s important to be resilient in the face of challenges.

2. Team building

Have students work together as a team to solve or work toward a problem being faced in their school or community. Here are a few ideas:

• Have students think about common issues their community faces, such as littered sidewalks or limited school supplies. Have them brainstorm ways they can help with those issues, such as pledging to volunteer a few times in the year or raising money.
• In small groups, have students identify everyday problems that might be solved with simple inventions. Then, have students brainstorm and design inventions that solve the problems. Have students present their ideas to the class, pointing out the problems and solutions.
• For a fun activity, have students work together in groups to brainstorm ideas for a scavenger hunt. Afterward, students can try out their classmates’ games.

SEL lessons for high school can be incorporated into your day-to-day instruction

High school students benefit from complex SEL that is woven into their preexisting curricula. In addition to writing prompts, teachers can promote relationship skills and social awareness by hosting discussions on the learning material. As students participate in small-group or classroom discussions, they practice debating, articulating their viewpoints, communicating, resolving conflicts, showing empathy, and working together toward a common resolution.

When incorporating SEL lessons for high school students into your day-to-day instruction, small changes can promote SEL competencies within an academic framework. Minor shifts in classroom schedules can allow for dedicated SEL time before students pack up and leave. Group discussions can become platforms to hone communication and relationship skills. At each point, teachers can customize their SEL approach to fit the unique needs of each class.

Realizing goals beyond the classroom

You know your relationships with your students can tip the scale when it comes to their engagement and learning. SEL activities for high school can inspire and appropriately challenge them to think about all the ways they fit into their communities and how they can get to know themselves better. When students can make meaningful connections with all the people in their lives, they are more likely to realize their true potential and envision a future where they can see their own worth and make a difference in the world.

Here’s to helping them achieve their goals, find their passions, and figure out their dreams!

Parts of this article were adapted from a blog post initially developed by the education technology company Classcraft, which was acquired by HMH in 2023. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of HMH.

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For more social and emotional writing activities, try these SEL journal prompts. Additionally, explore more fun social-emotional learning activities for all grade levels.

Learn about HMH’s embedded SEL curriculum for high school and how to help students thrive personally and academically.