SEL Curriculum Activities for Teens: Printable Worksheets, Games, Lesson Plans

RSS

When we give teens the tools to understand themselves and relate to others, we’re doing more than improving behavior or school performance — we’re helping them grow into confident, capable, and connected human beings.

Whether you’re a teacher, counselor, homeschooler, or parent, Social Emotional Learning offers a powerful way to help teens thrive academically, emotionally, and socially.

Gamifying Social Emotional Learning

Gamify SEL activities for teens, emotion words puzzles for middle and high school

Social emotional learning (SEL) doesn’t need to feel heavy or serious all the time. One of the most effective ways to make these skills stick — especially for teens — is to gamify the experience. Adding game elements to teaching activities and curriculum can make learning fun and increase engagement.

My Teaching Emotional Awareness series of SEL teacher manuals and printable handouts include word searches and scrambles, crossword puzzles, scenario-based worksheets, and cards for a What's Under Their Anger? interactive game.

I love games myself, so creating teaching aids for middle and high school students based on games comes naturally to me. These tools reflect what I’ve learned over decades of helping my counseling clients build emotion, communication, and relationship skills.

My 101 Emotions List

I’ll walk you through the EI and SEL teacher manuals, worksheets, and books I’ve published shortly — but first, I want to highlight a core element for many of these resources: my 101 Emotions List.

In my early work teaching parenting classes—long before I became a counselor—I began noticing two consistent patterns:

Having words to label emotions is essential for understanding yourself and others.
Most people have a limited emotion vocabulary that undermines their ability to understand themselves and the people around them.

That’s why I developed the 101 Emotions List as a foundation for building emotional intelligence. I use it daily in my therapy practice and have witnessed how much this simple tool jump-starts my clients' personal and relationship growth.

In creating the list, I divided the words into groups of Comfortable Emotions and Uncomfortable Emotions to move away from judgmental labels like “positive” and “negative.” Emotions aren't good or bad. They are information.

This 101 list forms the basis of my Emotional Intelligence Booster card set and is woven into other teaching and counseling aids I describe throughout this post.

A shared emotion vocabulary across multiple resources helps students build understanding from different angles and deepen their learning over time.

You'll also find opportunities within the materials to tailor the emotion focus based on your preferences. For example, you can modify the EI Booster card set by pulling out cards to highlight or setting aside ones that don’t fit your current goals. And with the variety of activity worksheets available in my other products, you can easily pick and choose what works best for your students, clients, or group.

Emotional Intelligence Booster card game

Printable PDF Downloads: SEL Curriculum Activities for Middle and High School Students

If you’re looking for a ready-to-use Social Emotional Learning curriculum for teens — from middle school through high school — my collection of instant download PDF printable workbooks offers a flexible, engaging way to build these skills step by step.

Each workbook is filled with creative SEL activities. They include puzzles, matching games, wordplay, and visual prompts to make emotional learning both meaningful and fun.

The Teaching Emotional Awareness Series has 6 teacher manuals with lesson plans, bulletin board posters, helpful tips for setting up a psychologically safe setting for kids talking about emotions, informational handouts, and activity worksheets.

They cover a range of emotional intelligence skills from simple feeling word vocabulary-building to expressing emotions with tact. The activities are designed for participation sizes from whole classrooms to small groups to individuals.

Each teacher's manual points out which of the five SEL competencies are being covered by the workbook and lesson objectives.

Check out my Social Emotional Learning Teacher Manuals and Fun Activities on my Etsy Store: AnnSWellnessDigitals!

1. Teaching Emotional Awareness: Identifying Emotions

Creative exercises that help students recognize and label emotions using word clouds, scrambles, and activities that encourage storytelling and reflection.

2. Teaching Emotional Awareness: Emotions Word Searches

Puzzle-style SEL activities that teach emotion vocabulary through themed word searches and hidden messages—introducing key ideas like “emotions are information” in a format that feels more like play than work.

3. Teaching Emotional Awareness: Comfortable Emotions Definitions and Crosswords

Crossword puzzles and definition-matching tasks offer a mentally stimulating way to explore feel-good "positive" emotions like joy, excitement, and gratitude.

4. Teaching Emotional Awareness: Uncomfortable Emotions Definitions and Crosswords

Structured puzzles and comparison activities help teens expand their vocabulary for uncomfortable, painful, "negative" feelings while developing emotional insight and resilience.

5. Teaching Emotional Awareness: What's Under Anger? Activities

This workbook focuses on teaching the concept of anger as a secondary emotion. It includes an anger iceberg poster and worksheets, self-reflection activities, writing prompts, and a printable card game that helps teens investigate the uncomfortable emotions hiding beneath anger—turning emotional awareness into an engaging challenge.

6. Teaching Emotional Awareness: Using "I" Messages to Express Emotions

Worksheet prompts and scenario-based writing exercises help students increase self-awareness and practice assertive communication using "I" messages. Exercises simulate real-life situations and support skill-building through repetition by offering multiple variations on a theme.