The Importance of Social Emotional Learning in Upper Elementary Classrooms
After years of teaching 4th and 5th grade, I've seen firsthand how social-emotional learning (SEL) transforms a classroom community and the students within that classroom. What started for me years ago as "Morning Meetings" has evolved into something much more robust and impactful than "sharing circles" and "morning greetings." Social-emotional learning through morning meetings or other SEL teaching blocks can be the foundational behavior management system, character education program, and life-skills program that in turn makes everything else we do in our classrooms more effective. SEL isn't a passing trend or an extra burden on teachers—it's the essential foundation that supports academic success and classroom harmony. Today, I'm sharing reasons why I think SEL is important and why it deserves real time and attention in your upper elementary classroom!
Maybe you landed here because you already teach Social-Emotional Learning lessons and are looking to take it to the next level. Maybe you are just curious about SEL, or maybe you want to strengthen or justify your commitment to teaching social-emotional topics by having an arsenal of reasons why it is important. (#I’m here for it!) I've got a ton of reasons why I think SEL is important in the upper elementary classroom (and younger grades and beyond!!).
I think it’s important to note that I believe SEL should be consistently taught in the classroom—and not used to describe some “one and done” type of lessons. Later in this post, I address how to make time for SEL. I hope my experiences will inspire you to make SEL a critical part of your teaching practice!
THE BENEFITS OF CONSISTENT SOCIAL EMOTIONAL LEARNING TIME IN UPPER ELEMENTARY
1) A POSITIVE CLASSROOM COMMUNITY
Let's start with a biggie! We all know that we can get more done in our classroom when students get along and know how to respectfully engage in the learning environment. Spending time building a positive classroom community is so beneficial for ourselves and students–it creates an attitude where everyone just wants to be at school and spend time together.
When my students come into the classroom in the mornings, I can see the impact of our SEL Morning Meetings in how they greet and show interest and care for one another. It's such a treat for me to observe their interactions and to know that I’m creating a positive community for them!
How do we make this happen? When you implement SEL lessons focused on kindness, sense of belonging, and resolving conflict, the positivity, respect, and care students show just increases. If you want the research to back it up, Harvard researchers found that positive classroom environments lead to more motivated and engaged students (Jones & Kahn, 2017)!
2) IMPACT ON ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT
When students develop social-emotional abilities, academic growth follows naturally. Research from CASEL (Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning) shows that SEL can increase academic performance by an average of 11 percentile points when compared to students who did not participate in an SEL program (CASEL, 2023).
In my classroom, I've witnessed this connection firsthand. Students who can navigate emotions, build relationships, and maintain a positive mindset feel good about themselves and engage more deeply with learning. The barriers that typically hinder learning—fear of appearing "stupid," unwillingness to ask for help, lack of motivation—can be mitigated when students feel emotionally balanced AND are explicitly taught skills like growth mindset, goal setting, managing emotions, and responsibility.
3) PROACTIVE BEHAVIOR MANAGEMENT
Let's be honest—one of our biggest challenges as teachers is managing student behavior! I've learned (the hard way) that instead of expecting students to know how to behave and then reacting (or nagging 😳) when they don't meet expectations, I've found that carving out time for SEL-Morning Meetings gives me the opportunity to front-load any topics that I think would benefit students as well as the time and space to address more serious and specific behavior problems as they arise.
When we explicitly teach lessons on managing emotions and resolving conflicts, we give students the tools they need before problems arise. It's like constantly putting out fires OR teaching fire prevention in the first place–which do you prefer?
4) REAL-WORLD SKILLS THROUGH SEL
I believe that most teachers want to equip students with the skills they will need the rest of their lives. We know intuitively that their future may not lie in reading nonfiction, solving math problems all day, or writing lengthy essays, but skills like being responsible, being able to communicate, standing up for themselves with courage, being kind, being able to figure out how to respond when something makes them angry, and being able to set goals and achieve them will be skills that will support students through anything they choose to do with their future lives. Not to mention, a person who can do all those things and more will have a HIGH quality of life.
When we dedicate time to having these important conversations with our students, we make an impact. I've seen the shy student who played alone at recess finally have the courage to go up to a group of girls and ask to play–and she had friends to play with the rest of the year! I've seen the student who thought they couldn't learn math start using positive self-talk and asking for breaks instead of shutting down with their head on their desk when feeling overwhelmed.
These transformations don't just improve our classroom today—they're setting these children up for success in relationships, careers, and life challenges we can't even imagine yet…all while creating a positive environment for our students and ourselves while they are with us.
5) STUDENTS WHO CAN REFLECT AND BETTER UNDERSTAND THEMSELVES
One of my favorite aspects of SEL is watching students develop self-awareness. When we teach students to reflect on their own actions, feelings, and goals, we're giving them a superpower! Through self-assessment activities, journal prompts, and class discussions students identify their strengths and areas for growth. This understanding of themselves along with intentional lessons focused on strategies that will help them overcome their challenges helps them accomplish meaningful personal improvements.
I've seen the kid who acted like no one could touch him start to show his true sensitivity and start to care about the reputation he had with his peers. My student who set a goal to learn her multiplication facts but was making little progress discovered during a goal setting reflection that she wasn't practicing consistently enough or being true to her goal. What a world we can impact when students develop this kind of self-awareness. Having the tools to shape their own growth will impact our students well beyond the time spent in our classroom.
🌟 I include self-reflections, rating scales, and reflection prompts in all of the SEL units I've created. Check out all the topics I've planned out for you here!
6) SUPPORTING MENTAL & EMOTIONAL WELLBEING
Upper elementary students are experiencing more complex emotions than ever before. They're navigating friendship drama, academic pressure, social media influences, and sometimes difficult home situations—all while their brains are still developing!
When using your SEL-morning meetings to teach students to manage their emotions, we can offer tools that everyone is familiar with, that become strategies that students can help one another use, and that improve students' ability to self-regulate, calm down, and talk about their feelings in healthy ways.
Through SEL morning meeting lessons, my students experience tremendous growth in their emotional maturity. Just as one example, one student who often had outbursts at the slightest frustration began recognizing her "early warning signs" and using some of our calming strategies to work out her feelings. When she started coming to me with ideas for helping herself, I knew we had made progress. You can find my managing emotions unit here to get started with your students today!
According to a meta-analysis published in Child Development, SEL not only improves academic performance but also increases students' ability to manage stress and depression while improving attitudes about themselves, others, and school (Durlak et al., 2011). This article also highlights the 11-percentile point gain in academic achievement! GO SEL PROGRAMS💪!
7) A CLASSROOM WHERE WE ALL BELONG
Our students spend over 1000 hours together each school year. That's a lot of time to either feel connected or left out. When I teach specific lessons on kindness, belonging, and empathy, I'm helping create a classroom where every student feels safe and valued for exactly who they are. It's truly amazing!
Through activities like discussing stories where characters felt alone or excluded, discussing perspective-taking scenarios, and working together on assignments, students learn to listen to and learn from viewpoints different from their own. I've watched them grow from dismissing different viewpoints to becoming curious about their classmates' experiences.
A STRUCTURE AND FLOW THAT MAKES SENSE FOR SEL
After implementing and designing social-emotional curriculum for my own students, I've found a structure and flow that allows deep learning to happen in relation to topics like kindness, goal-setting, perseverance, gratitude, growth mindset, and more. In each unit, I move students from activating prior knowledge about the topic and self-reflections, to learning about and deepening their understanding, identifying challenges related to that topic and coming up with strategies for dealing with those challenges, to then reflecting on their growth in demonstrating the positive aspects of the topic. All of this happens in one SEL unit through what I call my SEL-Morning Meeting Framework.
Phase 1: Introduce the Topic and Self-Assess
Begin with engaging, attention-grabbing activities that connect students to the topic
Establish shared vocabulary to ensure common understanding
Guide students through self-assessment
Phase 2: Build Understanding
Explore concepts through carefully selected picture-book read alouds and videos
Practice skills through role-play scenarios and group discussions
Analyze real classroom situations through the lens of the SEL topic
Phase 3: Develop Strategies and Learn Tools for Independence
Identify common obstacles students face when applying these skills
Develop strategies for overcoming challenges
Evaluate different responses to the challenges
Phase 4: Reflect on Growth and Develop Generalized Knowledge about the Topic
Connect concepts across literature to create deeper and lasting understanding
Return to initial assessments to reflect on personal growth
Celebrate progress and identifying next steps
Reflect on learning through writing and discussion
This approach ensures that SEL becomes woven into the fabric of classroom culture rather than existing as isolated lessons. As you cycle through multiple topics throughout the year, this framework becomes an expected structure through which students learn about and deepen their understanding of social emotional skills and topics.
🌟If you’d like a closer look at my social-emotional units chocked full of reflection opportunities, role-playing scenarios, social emotional learning worksheets, and meaningful activities, you can find them all here. Your students can surely benefit from some of the topics, and you’ll love that the lesson plans are already put together for you!
WHAT ABOUT FINDING THE TIME FOR SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING?
I find having enough time to be an issue no matter the subject area I’m teaching. I want to do so much with my students! Our Social Emotional Learning block (done during morning meetings for me) is one of my "no matter what" routines. In these blog posts, I offer some ideas for problem-solving your SEL or morning meeting schedule and ways that you can be creative with time as you implement classroom meetings. For now, just know that 15-20 minutes is long enough and that 2-3 days a week still makes an impact if you can’t have them every day!
DOWNLOAD YOUR FIRST SOCIAL EMOTIONAl- MORNING MEETING UNIT FREE!
This free theme unit is packed with lesson ideas, student journal pages, discussion prompts, self-reflections, bulletin board materials, and more. YES! Everything you see below for the belonging theme is FREE!
TOPICS TO ADDRESS IN YOUR SOCIAL-EMOTIONAL LEARNING TIME FOR THE WHOLE YEAR
If you’d like more social emotional theme units with a focus on encouraging students’ social, emotional, and academic success, you may be interested in the SEL - Morning Meeting Mega Bundle of 16 theme units. It includes all of the topics below (linked to the resource in my Teachers Pay Teachers store: