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In a turbulent world where stressors are abundant, (Harvard) providing students with sufficient anxiety coping skills is important. Stress has consistent mental and physical effects on one’s health. The classroom is one place where children can learn skills to cope with stress.
Anxiety Coping Skills for Kids in the Classroom
Creating classroom-appropriate coping skills activities for kids requires an imaginative approach. In principle, everyone needs to practice calming techniques to deal with stress. In practice, children are more likely to remember anxiety coping strategies when they’re incorporated into interactive activities.
Creating coping strategies for students requires a dual-pronged approach. On the one hand, it means creating activities with a foundation on the causes of stress and anxiety. On the other hand, every classroom is different, with different challenges and resources. Therefore, different stressors drive each student’s anxiety and may need to be addressed separately.
Here’s a quick rundown of stress and anxiety coping strategies to help educators teach activities around anxiety coping skills for kids.
Anxiety Coping Strategies
Stress and anxiety shadow the day-to-day lives of millions of Americans. Children are no exception. Stressors that cause anxiety are on the rise, and the prevalence of younger children dealing with them is also increasing. (HarvardGSE)
Recent studies were conducted on the most effective techniques for coping with stress and anxiety. It was found that coping with anxiety should be based on executive function through self-regulation (HarvardCDC).
In the context of teaching coping strategies to kids, this refers to a practice of cultivating the foundational mental capacities for active self-regulation. These are skills fundamental to a child’s development.
Cultivating executive function through self-regulation prepares children for success in life. There are technical bases for practicing executive function. (HarvardCDC) Put into usable terms, these bases are:
Working memory. Thisincludesthe capacity to retain information learned from experiences and lessons. In this context, manipulation refers to an ability to examine the information from different perspectives, to synthesize the information with other information to come to new conclusions, and other mental practices useful for problem-solving.
Mental flexibility. Thisrefers to the ability to adapt to new circumstances. For children, a lot of their experiences are new experiences. Fortunately for them, children tend to have good mental flexibility. That’s why early childhood is such an opportune time to design activities to encourage children to cope with stress.
Self-control. In the long run, self-control will be one of the most important fundamental skills children will need to practice to help them cope with anxiety. Self-control involves self-reflection on the part of children, as well as active decision-making regarding their behavior. Educators can create coping skills activities that cultivate opportunities for kids to practice self-control.
These processes for cultivating executive function through self-regulation will build strong foundations for developing coping skills activities.
Coping Skills Activities for Kids
There are many potential coping skills activities for kids that educators can add to their curricula. Educators should bear in mind the foundations of anxiety coping strategies when developing classroom activities, and at the same time adapt any activities to the students in their individual classrooms.
Here are a few suggestions for activities that have proven effective in teaching anxiety coping strategies. Educators can start with this list and then develop their own activities from there (Pathway):
Schedule daily emotional check-ins. These check-ins create the chance for students to practice self-reflection and self-awareness.
Have children make something creative that shows them messiness is okay. Painting, coloring, or clay gives children something to focus on and control, helping them practice spatial reasoning, working memory, and active mental flexibility.
Gratitude journaling/compliment list helps with positive thinking and reflection. This activity helps children cultivate a practice for seeing scenarios from calmer and more down to earth perspectives, helping them with working memory and self control.
Practice deep breathing. This go-to strategy is important when coping with anxiety. A wide body of research has substantiated the benefits, both mental and physical, of deep breathing. (Routledge) At Soul Shoppe, we use the Stop and Breathe Technique. This is a valuable anxiety coping strategy that any educator can incorporate into their curriculum.
Encourage children to read books that are age-appropriate with themes of stress and anxiety. Reading is a great way for students to see anxiety coping skills for kids in action through the stories of others. Dissect and discuss these stories to encourage deeper thinking.
Making judgment calls as a well-adjusted person of any age requires complicated assessments of the pros and cons behind each choice. It is a process largely informed by life experiences, risk assessments, and desires. In order to create the best possible outcome for children to lead rewarding, successful lives, it’s important to provide them with opportunities to develop strong decision-making skills.
Teaching Decision-Making Skills
Activities that encourage students to practice decision-making should supplement the rest of their education since decision-making skills are part of everyday life. (Harvard). Therefore, decision-making activities for students will constitute an important part of any social-emotional learning curriculum. Activities that encourage students to learn decision-making skills don’t need to be bland. You can even incorporate them into fun games.
Teaching decision-making skills to students will help them navigate challenging opportunities independently in the future. Educators will find it valuable to tailor their teaching activities to their specific students. Here are some ideas to start the process.
Decision-Making Activities for Students
Providing students with opportunities to learn decision-making skills will help with everything else in the classroom. Many decision-making activities for students involve opportunities to learn other important life skills since decision-making is a feature of many experiences. When students improve their decision-making abilities, they are essentially improving their own agency.
Let’s explore some activities that encourage students to practice decision-making skills. They might look like activities with other purposes, but they include valuable tools for students to practice making decisions.
Board Games
Board games are perfect tools for practicing decision-making skills. The more complicated the game, the better. With rules to remember and objectives to plan for, it’s almost like board games were designed as decision-making laboratories. They randomly generate scenarios where children have to weigh options and plan ahead within a set of designated parameters.
Board games are like miniaturized life experiences, including opportunities to make cost-benefit analyses. In board games, children are also faced with decisions concerning each others’ feelings and determinations.
An additional way of using board games to create decision-making opportunities is by asking students to play them in teams. If they play team-focused board games, they are faced with further opportunities to make decisions about cooperation, team building, and how to operate in a community.
Outdoor Games
A surefire way of encouraging children to learn anything is getting them to move around and learn actively. Outdoor games of any kind rest on twin foundations of rules and goals. A structured environment with risks and rewards gives children ample opportunity to practice decision-making.
Team activities, such as kickball or capture the flag, help students practice rapid decision-making while teaching them to see how they affect their group in real-time. Other activities, like Simon Says or Hide-and-Seek, provide opportunities for children to practice some self-aware decision-making, improving their sense of individuality.
Role Playing
Dramatic plays or other role-playing activities are great decision-making learning tools. Even if the role-play scenario is scripted, children are still getting an opportunity to practice imagining the world around them from a perspective beyond their own. Furthermore, whether the situation is scripted or not, students get to imagine the result of decisions they might not make otherwise. Students can even create their own role-playing scenarios with prompts.
Reading
The ultimate tool for engaging a student’s imagination is reading. Books are a perfect tool for students to see decisions play out, good or bad, as well as their consequences. Through the insights of literature, students will be able to have conversations about how and why someone might make certain decisions. As an educator, you can bring decision-making questions to the forefront of discussion.
Friendly Debate
In a moderated setting, debating different perspectives creates chances for students to think critically about the strengths and weaknesses of different courses of action. Students can articulate their own views on a given subject, and evaluate reasons against that view with moderation. This exercise helps students practice weighing the costs and benefits of decisions.
Decision-Making Skills in the Classroom
Creating tools for students to practice making decisions is important. Educators should build intentional environments where their students can hone their decision-making skills in safety. Then they can impress upon students that these skills practiced through games or activities can be implemented outside of the classroom too.
The importance of teaching kindness to elementary students cannot be overstated. (Harvard) Students rely on two aspects of the classroom to learn valuable life lessons. Overtly, students rely on lessons and planned curriculum. On a more subtle, but no less important level, students learn from interpersonal interactions with their teachers and fellow students.
When it comes to teaching kindness in the classroom, both overt and subtle strategies can come into play. Kindness activities for kids can be incorporated into the curriculum. Furthermore, a general policy promoting kindness through action is important.
Teaching Kindness in the Classroom
When educators teach kindness, they will need to pay attention to their own behaviors. Since kindness is a learned behavior, children will watch the way their teachers, parents, and fellow students act. Children will also look for cues in their communities to show them how to behave in different social situations. Kids constantly observe and mimic adults. They understand when adults are only saying they value kindness and empathy when in reality, they are making selfish decisions. (Today) Therefore, it’s important to display genuine kindness.
The minds of children are sponges. Everything they see will guide and reinforce their behavioral choices. Here are some recommendations (PBS):
Model kindness: Think through the regular interactions during a day that students might see (e.g. waiting in line for a drink, borrowing a pencil), and be careful to approach those interactions with kindness.
Intentionally teach empathy: Whenever possible, incorporate intentional messages of empathy into discussions of social interactions, for example, when addressing conflict in the classroom.
Celebrate acts of kindness: Rewards help reinforce behaviors. If students learn to associate acts of kindness with positive reinforcement in the classroom, it will help them to learn to associate kindness and positive outcomes.
Regular meetings:Since kindness is a learned behavior, facilitating opportunities for students to take ownership of their actions reinforces positive behaviors. Educators can incorporate class meetings with regular conversations that prompt students to discuss acts of kindness. This creates a tool for students to encourage each other and reinforces lessons.
Emphasis on friendship: Children might not all be best friends with one another, but they can learn solidarity and care for one another. Students can learn that communities should watch out for each other and take care of each other. Recognizing that friendship means caring is a valuable lesson for children to help them lead rewarding lives.
Teaching kindness in the classroom has to be approached holistically. Many lessons in kindness will be incidental to behaviors and interactions throughout the day.
Kindness Activities for Kids
It’s valuable to reinforce lessons learned through interactions with more intentional learning activities.
There are many resources available to educators that promote teaching kindness. Soul Shoppe’s Tools of the Heart is a comprehensive online program that teaches social emotional skills, including kindness, empathy, and connection.
Here are some additional ideas to get you started (NaturesPath):
Cooperative activities: Activities that require cooperation between students in order to achieve goals provide ample opportunities for children to practice kindness, especially if educators are there to moderate and guide interactions. Activities like outdoor team sports or playing board games on teams put students in situations where they can practice kindness.
Volunteering opportunities: Field trips to volunteer at animal shelters, homes for the elderly, or food banks give children chances to practice kindness in immersive contexts.
Write letters to soldiers on active duty. Writing letters to cheer up soldiers who are deployed away from their families and friends promotes writing skills and demonstrates an act of kindness.
Bake cookies for local heroes: Firefighters, local police departments, EMTs, first responders, nurses, etc. all work long shifts. Bringing them sweets, whether baked or bought, is a simple act of kindness to brighten their days.
Engage in community fundraising for charity: Students can write letters to local businesses asking them for donations to a specific charity, for example, Rise Against Hunger. This helps students take an active role in raising funds for charities and teaches them to utilize the community resources that are available, rather than just their own means to enact kindness.
Practice compassion through the power of role play: Create a group assignment where students write and produce a play about an act of kindness. Teaching kindness to kids is powerful when educators guide them in a way that ultimately helps kids teach themselves.
Reading: There are a lot of books out there about kindness. (ReadBrightly) Never underestimate the power of stories as teaching tools. Find a book list with kindness as its central theme and assign some reading.
When it comes to teaching kindness in the classroom, educators must approach it from an understanding that children learn by both watching and participating. If an educator would like assistance with teaching kindness in the classroom, you can receive help with virtual social learning activities. Soul Shoppe provides social emotional learning programs for children and educators that are available online and in schools.
Soul Shoppe strategies encourage kindness in children. Whether helping in the classroom or assisting parents at home, Soul Shoppe brings kindness to the forefront of the discussion. Click for more information on SEL Programs for Elementary Schools or our parent support programs.
Young children tend to have psychological elasticity, and they can handle a lot. Believe it or not, childhood is the ideal time for kids to learn as many positive thinking exercises and coping mechanisms as possible.
With a foundation in positive thinking techniques, children will have a better chance of living more fulfilling and successful lives. Positive thinking is connected with lower rates of depression, longer life spans, less distress, and psychological and physical well-being. (Mayo Clinic) As a result, it’s important to routinely incorporate positive thinking exercises for students into the curriculum.
Positive Thinking Exercises
Positive Reframing and Evidence-Based Reappraisal
One of the more powerful lessons that students can learn at school is the different ways of processing information and experiences. The power of perspective is among the skills that students can use to cultivate positive thinking.
Reappraisal is an essential positive thinking technique. Two valuable reappraisal strategies for positive thinking techniques are positive reframing and examining evidence.
Positive Reframing
One positive thinking technique for students is positive reframing. (Harvard) When children encounter negative experiences or challenging situations, it can be a powerful way to reframe their experiences in a positive way. For instance, when a student doesn’t do as well as they’d hoped on a piece of homework, they might be inclined to think of that experience as a failure.
Positively reframing that experience creates a learning opportunity. A grade that doesn’t quite meet a child’s hopes and expectations indicates where a student needs to improve in upcoming assignments. However, it also indicates the areas where a student is doing well. Positively reframing the experience of getting a different grade than they expected could ultimately help that student figure out how to improve.
It can be challenging for students to think of something positive about a situation that seems negative. However, with some practice, children can learn how to find things to feel grateful for. Feeling gratitude is a great way to stoke the flames of positive thinking.
Examining Evidence
Another positive thinking exercise for students is examining evidence. (Harvard) Typically, reacting emotionally comes as a first instinct. This is especially true for children who haven’t had as many experiences making decisions before they react. As a result, many students will react emotionally without considering the evidence. In many cases, a perceived negative outcome is the result of complex thinking.
This positive thinking exercise for students is meant to help them pause and consider aspects of an experience that they might not instinctively take into consideration. Once they begin to develop a habit of examining the evidence produced by a perceived negative situation, then it will be possible to start teaching positive thinking techniques.
For example, suppose a student doesn’t obtain the grade on a piece of homework that they would like to achieve. It can be a discouraging experience, and a student’s first instinct might be to view it as an unfair reflection of them.
A reexamination of the evidence, however, might reveal that the student has some areas for improvement in their studying techniques, maybe, or in their decisions about where to place more energy studying in the future.
Reappraisal is a powerful positive thinking technique for students. As educators, it is of paramount importance to instill that even when they can’t control outcomes, they can always control their reactions to those outcomes.
Other Positive Thinking Exercises and Positive Thinking Activities for Students
Reappraisal is an effective strategy for students to learn the skill of positive thinking. However, reappraisal also necessitates abstract thinking and abstract conversation. Therefore, children might learn positive thinking strategies more easily from salient activities instead of abstract concepts.
Designing positive thinking activities for students will require different approaches for each and every unique classroom. Here are a few ideas to get educators started.
Finding Examples of Forgiveness
For this activity, students will find an example of forgiveness from a movie or book. In order to contribute to a classroom discussion, students will explain why they believe they have found a good example of forgiveness, and they will go on to give a brief explanation as to why their example speaks to them.
The purpose of this positive thinking activity is to provide students with an opportunity to practice slowing their anxious thoughts down to examine each situation. At the same time, it will provide children with a chance to think about the intricacies of forgiveness from more than one perspective.
Finding and Naming Benefits
In this positive thinking exercise, children are asked to think about an experience they had that they didn’t enjoy. Then through guided conversation, the children are asked to think about whether they experienced any positive effects from the experience they didn’t enjoy. Children then name specific benefits.
This positive thinking exercise encourages children to think about experiences along longer timelines. The benefit of this activity is learning to think about experiences as thoroughly as possible and to approach them with different perspectives.
Positive Reminiscences
Like any other life skill, positive thinking is something we can practice. In this exercise, students will tell a story of something they enjoyed, either as a writing exercise or verbally in a class discussion. Encourage students to reflect on things they find particularly fond of in the memory.
The benefit of this positive thinking strategy for students is the practical nature of practicing a positive thought process. If students have more opportunities to repeat positive thoughts, then they’ll be able to practice the act of thinking positively about new experiences when they encounter them.
Positive Thinking Techniques for Students
Students can learn to change their thinking by focusing on positive aspects of their experiences. If children can learn positive thinking strategies in the classroom, it will better prepare them for seeing the positive aspects of new experiences as they grow and age. The result is that children will be better prepared for life’s hurdles and more likely to appreciate the good things around them.
When educators need assistance with lessons that encourage social emotional development, Soul Shoppe helps with online SEL programs. Soul Shoppe encourages empathy and emotional awareness in children. Whether helping in the classroom or assisting parents at home, Soul Shoppe brings social skills to the forefront of the discussion. Click for more information on SEL Programs for Elementary Schools or our parent support programs.
For some kids, classrooms might be the only safe place they know. Unfortunately, some children have had traumatic experiences in their past, and some are experiencing trauma at home in the present. According to the US Department of Veterans Affairs, somewhere between 14% and 43% of all children live through traumatic experiences, and between 1% and 15% of those children develop PTSD. (USDVA) Children can suffer psychological, physical, or sexual abuse; although most traumatic experiences children live through relate to neglect. (USDVA) Trauma-informed teaching strategies will prepare educators to build classroom environments that nurture and welcome all children.
Trauma-Informed Teaching Strategie
Repairing trauma is a lengthy process, and generally, it requires attention from specialists in order to treat its effects. That being said, it is of the utmost importance for educators to create classroom environments that provide a sense of safety and security to students of all ages. (Harvard)
Creating a trauma-sensitive classroom checklist and gathering trauma-informed teaching resources will help educators to design strategies and classroom activities. These strategies will need to be adapted to the specific needs of each classroom. However, there are some trauma-informed teaching strategies that will help educators to develop trauma-informed curricula for their classrooms.
Trauma-Sensitive Classroom Checklist
It’s impossible to plan for every possible trigger that might affect a child who is coping with a traumatic experience. However, it is possible to prepare teachers and faculty to notice the signs of trauma and cultivate a classroom environment that students experience as a safe place.
One effective tool in adopting trauma-informed teaching strategies is developing a trauma-sensitive classroom checklist. Examples of these trauma-sensitive checklists vary for the practical reason that different classrooms have different needs.
Here are some approaches worth considering in developing a trauma-sensitive environment:
Communicate expectations of students in clear terms and in a positive tone. For example, saying “Please walk,” instead of “Don’t run.”
Foster an environment where individual student strengths are encouraged and rewarded.
Structure activities in a predictable and safe way.
Create positive feedback policies for good behavior.
Review lessons and ensure they account for multiple learning styles.
Design activities that provide students with opportunities to practice effective community interaction.
Design activities that provide students with opportunities to practice effective planning and see how their plans can come to fruition.
When developing trauma-informed policy at your school, here are a few things to consider:
Leadership, faculty, teachers, etc. should adopt a strategy to implement a trauma-sensitive action plan.
Include clearly communicated expectations of predictably safe environments accommodating transition and sensory needs.
Encourage educators to assess the effect of trauma as a learning obstacle and adjust curricula accordingly.
Adopt balanced discipline strategies that include trauma in measuring accountability.
Assess the support available to teachers and educators, e.g., on-staff counselors or off-campus counseling services.
Are there channels for confidential discussions about students?
Ensure the creation of protocols and procedures for cooperating with safety planning, including court orders and confidential transfer and storage of records.
There is a lot to consider when designing a trauma-sensitive plan. However, creating this kind of checklist is a strong tool in developing trauma-informed teaching strategies and programs. So, while there is a lot to take into account, it’s an important effort in fostering a safe learning environment.
Trauma-Informed Teaching Activities
Implementing classroom activities is a powerful way to reach students. Developing trauma-informed teaching activities is a great way to help students who are coping with trauma.
Here are a few suggestions to get started:
Schedule classroom circle or community discussion time to build relationships, and strengthen classroom culture.
Share affirmation statements and then engage in positive discussion. This creates a space for students to talk about themselves and about other people in a positive way. A variation on this is the compliment circle where students sit in a circle and find things to compliment each other about.
Journaling can be a powerful tool for students to develop self-awareness. Provide students with opportunities to write down their thoughts with writing prompts.
Relationship-building activities, such as playing board games and working as a team, are powerful ways to give students the opportunity to practice emotional learning.
Among the highest goals of education is preparing children for rewarding lives and success in whatever field they choose. A large part of that comes from instilling a sense of confidence and faith in their own value. Because confidence is such an important life skill, it’s a good idea to incorporate confidence-building activities for kids into classroom curriculum.
Confidence-Building Activities for Kids
When creating confidence-building activities for kids, the unique personalities within a class will inform the development of the curriculum. At the same time, there are quite a few fundamentally useful thoughts to help you get started.
How to Build Self-Confidence in a Child
Self-confidence comes from several sources. Some learn how to be confident at home, and others from external accomplishments. Additionally, some children develop confidence more easily than others. In a classroom setting, understanding confidence as a teachable skill means approaching it directly, instead of trusting that it will come as a result of other experiences. Techniques indicating how to build self-confidence in a child begin with lessons in self-sufficiency. (Harvard)
For instance, when small children are provided with opportunities to be “big kids,” it shows them how to take responsibility and achieve growth. If children have choices for how they dress or decorate their spaces, or, if they are encouraged to ask questions when shopping or on field trips, then they have the chance to practice forming their own opinions and seeing those opinions rewarded with respect. Ultimately, autonomy and a sense of accomplishment can occur through choices and opportunities. This can lead to confidence.
Another example of this is introducing a chore chart. Chore charts are valuable learning tools from the earliest ages. If children get to participate in the upkeep of their space, especially if that upkeep is part of a community effort, then it gives children the opportunity to understand that their actions affect their environments, and at the same time they can intentionally change their environments. When children understand they can improve their world with purpose, they gain confidence.
You can design activities to boost a child’s sense of self-worth and self-sufficiency. When deciding how to build self-confidence in a child, there are many possible activities that educators can implement.
Classroom Activities to Build Self-Esteem
Designing classroom activities to build self-esteem will depend on the specific needs of the students in the classroom. That being said, there are plenty of fun games to boost self-esteem that an educator can use as a template to begin planning their own classroom activities.
Here are some self-confidence activities for students:
Letter to yourself- In this activity, students will write a letter to themselves. Either to their future self or to their past self. Or, they can write a thank you note to themselves right now. The essence of this activity is to provide children with the tools to look at themselves with an encouraging eye and constructive self-critique.
Gratitude journaling- In this activity, students will make regular entries into a notebook with the sole purpose of appreciating something about themselves or the world around them at a regular interval, such as every day or every week. Part of building a child’s self-esteem includes introducing the habit of believing positive things about themselves. Additionally, when children regularly note positive things around them, it can create a habit of gratitude and positive thinking.
Goals journaling- Accomplishment in all its forms can contribute to confidence. A helpful activity is for students to regularly update a journal in which they write down the goals they would like to achieve in their lives. They should then note what kind of progress they have made in achieving those goals. As a bonus, incorporate a reward system when they achieve their personal goals.
Cooperative board games- A sense of self-worth can come from feeling like you are a valuable member of the community. Children can feel empowered when they can see how their contributions improve their team. Cooperative games can also provide valuable self-reflection opportunities when children work with each other to accomplish common goals.
Achievements collage or journal- When students can see evidence of what they’ve accomplished it can boost their self-confidence. They can create a collage of pictures or drawings. Older students can also create lists. Helping students to get into the habit of seeing the results of their achievements can help their self-confidence improve.
Building confidence is a skill that requires attention and nurturing. Children might not have the benefit of acquiring confidence elsewhere. Therefore, implementing ways to build self-confidence in the classroom gives students an advantage in academics as well as in life. People who are confident generally perform better at tasks, and they thrive in the workforce as they get older. (Chron)
