Middle School Coping Skills SEL Lesson – Jeopardy Digital Game

Ok, so we need to talk about coping skills, specifically teaching coping skills SEL lessons at the middle school level. For a number of reasons, in the last few years, we have seen a huge increase in the number of middle school students with stress and anxiety. It is incredibly important that students know effective coping skills to be able to deal with those more difficult emotions.

How to Cater to a Middle School Audience

Here’s a few conclusions I have come to when it comes to teaching a coping skills SEL lesson for an entire classroom of middle schoolers:

• Acting out in front of the class? No thank you: I love mindfulness and breathing techniques. Love teaching it in my individual counseling sessions, and even in small groups. But when it comes to an entire classroom, that’s a no-go for me. Middle schoolers, especially 7th and 8th grade, are incredibly self-conscious. And there’s always that one student that won’t take it seriously. Do I really want to have students act out different breathing techniques in front of their peers? Are they going to do it without feeling self-conscious? Probably not. However, I still want to get the information out there. I don’t want to just give a dry presentation on breathing technqiues, so that’s where gamifying the lesson comes in.

• Worksheets are boring: Look, as a former ELA teacher, that had a lot of worksheets, I get it. Worksheets have their place. However, I didn’t feel bad giving my students a worksheet every now and again when I was teaching because I taught them every single day of the year. I could get away with a not-so exciting lesson every now and again, because we did some pretty cool stuff most other days. Now, as a counselor, I only see each class a couple of times a year. Do I really want to spend those precious lessons doing something basic? Or do I want to put in a little extra time and teach SEL skills in a way that leaves an impression? I’ll pick the latter.

• Middle Schoolers love digital games: I mean, have you tried Kahoot? I used to use all kinds of digital games for review lessons, so I thought: Is there a way to use a digital game to frontload and actually teach content instead of review on the backend? Now, this lesson could definitely be used as a supplemental review lesson (if say, you teach a weekly advisory SEL class, or if your a counselor and able to get into the classrooms more often). However, this lesson is designed to embed instruction throughout the game questions.

(Read more about the effectiveness of game-based lessons here: Use Game-Based Learning to Increase Engagement During SEL Lessons)

How to Play:

Do doo doo do do dooo doo doooo… If you’re familiar with Jeopardy, you know the basic premise of how to play the game. Divide students up into teams to start. There are 5 categories in Coping Skills Jeopardy: Definitions, Breathe, Actions, Mindset, and Relax.

Aside from the definitions category, each category covers a different type of coping skill for when we are stressed. The Breathe category teaches students different breathing techniques.

The Active category covers different things we can do with our body to move to help us feel less stressed.

The Mindset category is focused on different mental exercises and ways of changing our perspective to handle stress.

Finally, the Relax category shows students different relaxation techniques they can do calm themselves down when stressed out.

Teams can earn points for being the first to answer correctly (in the form of a question, of course!). Instruction is emdeded into the questions themselves, so students learn as they play. The best thing is that the entire game is on google slides, and it is an easy, engaging, low-prep lesson. The slides are fully linked with working buttons, making this lesson interactive and easy-to-navigate.

I really believe in the importance of guidance lessons, SEL lessons, or counseling lessons, or whatever you want to call them, even at the middle school level. If you’re looking for a fun, but effective lesson for your own students, you can check out this specific lesson in my TPT store: Coping Skills Jeopardy

I hope your students enjoy playing!