Overcoming Obstacles
Coping Skills
A instructional activity brings awareness to a variety of emotions. After discussing the many types of emotions, scholars create a list sorting emotions as easy and hard and then brainstorm coping skills. Pupils draw a picture depicting...
Missouri Department of Elementary
Lean Mean Coping Machine!
Seventh graders are asked to choose and rank five scenarios from a list of ten that are most important to them. After explaining the reasons for the choices, they then identify the coping skills they used to make their decisions.
Overcoming Obstacles
Coping Skills
A lesson challenges scholars to identify life stressors and list ways to cope. Learners create a "Coping with Emotions" book detailing the importance of responsibly working through our feelings.
Lions Clubs International Foundation
Mindful Self-Management Exercise: Impulse Control
A coping skill helps to manage emotions. Young scholars pretend they are a remote control. When they feel strongly about something, they pause their actions, take a deep breath, reflect, and press play to get back to what they were doing.
Education Foundation of Sarasota County
Self-Calming Strategies to Manage Emotions
Tweens and teens learn coping skills to help manage strong emotions such as anger, fear, and sadness with a lesson plan that asks them to generate a list of self-calming strategies they use and to consider the suggestions in a short...
Missouri Department of Elementary
Life … Bring It On!
To conclude the study of coping skills, class members create a collage that identifies and celebrates their strengths that support their ability to make good decisions.
Missouri Department of Elementary
Other Changes (Life-Changing Events Outside of the Family)
Change is inevitable. Kindergarteners discuss coping skills to properly manage changes that can occur outside the family. Scholars reflect on their life changes after starting kindergarten. They discuss their feelings and draw a...
Nebraska Department of Education
Stress and Coping
Life can be stressful. Class members fill out T-charts identifying stressors associated with school, parents, friends, and life then list coping strategies that can help with each category.
Missouri Department of Elementary
Healthy Touches and Private Touches
Scholars identify the difference between healthy touches and private touches. A discussion leads pupils to recognize several trusting adults. Peers role-play scenarios in which they use three rules to remain safe.
Health Smart Virginia
Mental Health/Social Emotional Skills
A 7-page packet of activity ideas, lesson plans, and information resources provides instructors of high school freshmen a wealth of materials to support teaching the concepts in a Health Smart unit.
Missouri Department of Elementary
My Feelings
Encourage self-awareness with a instructional activity that challenges scholars to identify feelings—happy, sad, mad, and scared. Using a feelings thermometer, similar to that of a bar graph, pupils discuss how they would feel in...
Scholastic
Stressed Out?
Provide tweens and teens with information they need to know about stress with an article that details how stress affects various organs in the body. The article also offers tips for healthy ways to cope with stress.
Nemours KidsHealth
Depression: Grades 6-8
Over two lessons, scholars examine depression—what it is, signs of it, and ways to cope. Through discussion, reading articles, writing a resource, and completing worksheets, participants make their way through the learning process,...
Hastings Prince Edward Public Health
My Life—My Mental Health
Between peer pressure, an onslaught of hormones, and brand new responsibilities, the teenage years can be emotionally volatile. Equip young adults with coping mechanisms and a safe place to discuss their feelings with a guided lesson...
Missouri Department of Elementary
Caution: Thin Ice!
Sixth graders listen to a story titled "Thin Ice!" then partake in a whole-class discussion asking and answering questions about what was read. Scholars brainstorm risky behaviors in preparation for a game of RISKO—a game similar to...
Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment
Managing Change
Adolescence and teenage years are very difficult in terms of emotions, primarily due to the amount of change going on in growing teens' lives. Guide middle schoolers through disruptive changes and transitions with a set of activities...
Plum Tree
Teaching Your Child How to "Deep Breathe"
Feeling stressed, angry, or nervous? It's time to practice the exercise detailed in Deep Breathe to breathe your cares away. The activity brings the focus back to one's self and identifies the importance of staying calm.
National Institute of Drug Abuse
Nurturing My Mental and Emotional Health
One exercise does not necessarily work for all! A resource from the National Institutes of Health provides tweens and teens with exercises to help them cope with anxiety and stress. Participants note their stress levels before and after...
Northern Ireland Curriculum
Self Concept
It may not be possible to have control over all aspects of life, but through the activities and discussions in this lesson class members learn different ways to cope with those areas over which they have little or no control.
PBS
Stories of Painkiller Addiction: Contemplating Nature vs. Nurture
Does having an addict in your family make it more likely to become one yourself? Explore the genetic risk factors, as well as the prominent environmental influences, for substance addiction in a lesson that encourages awareness and open...
Curated OER
Fatal Accident
Eleventh graders explore, examine and study the impact of personal decisions on the safety and health of self and others. They assess how to evaluate individual coping skills to manage life-changing events. Each student defines and...
Missouri Department of Elementary
What are Comfortable (Good) and Uncomfortable (Bad) Feelings?
Two puppets open a discussion about comfrotable and uncomfortable touches. Scholars add to the discussion information they remember from a previous instructional activity, then delve deep into three problem-solving safety rules, and...
Missouri Department of Elementary
To Give In or Not to Give In—That Is the Question!
No! A very simple word that can be very hard to say. Seventh graders have an opportunity to practice this difficult skill as they engage in a series of role-playing scenarios. As an exit ticket, 7th graders write a reflection on the...
Florida Department of Health
Exploring Healthy Relationships Unit
A four-lesson unit on healthy relationships begins by helping individuals develop a positive sense of self-worth by identifying their own positive characteristics. Participants also examine data from the YRBS Online Tool about the...