TeachableMoment Lessons

SEL & RP

SEL & RP

Activities to support students' social and emotional learning and restorative practices

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Current Issues

Current Issues

Classroom activities to engage students in learning about and discussing issues in the news

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Tips & Ideas

Tips & Ideas

Guidance and inspiration to help build skills and community in your classroom and school

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SEL & RP
Social & Emotional Learning & Restorative Practices
Current Issues
Current Issues
Tips and Ideas
Tips & Ideas

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These guidelines provide helpful suggestions for discussing upsetting issues in the news.

In this circle activity, students share their thoughts and feelings about events in Ferguson and reflect on a quote about protest from Martin Luther King Jr.

In this brief activity, students share their thoughts and feelings about the grand jury's decision not to indict the police officer who killed unarmed black teen Michael Brown in

The world's richest 85 people have as much wealth as half the people on earth. Students develop graphics or concepts to demonstrate this extreme inequality, express their thoughts

In this lesson, students learn about a performance art piece by Columbia University student Emma Sulkowicz that dramatizes her reactions to the handling of her campus sexual

This circle activity invites students to share their feelings about gratitude and to express  gratitude for things large and small. 

Twenty-five years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, students learn about the wall's rise and fall, and consider the legacy of the Cold War. (See also our companion lesson on

In small and large group reading and discussion, students consider the U.S. response to Ebola and the need to develop a sense of our interconnectness and responsibility to each

This lesson provides factual information to students about Ebola.  Providing accurate information about the disease may help prevent misinformed students from targeting classmates

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Threats by Donald Trump and by North Korea have stoked worries about nuclear war. In this lesson, students learn about the work of International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

This activity uses a circle format to engage students in sharing their thoughts and reactions to the Weinstein case, using tweets from a variety of sources. A backgrounder and

President Trump tweeted that Puerto Rico has "only itself to blame" for the financial crisis that plagued the island even before Hurricane Maria struck. This lesson explores that

Taking a deep breath isn’t just for difficult moments. This simple soothing strategy can help us and our students any time we need it.

Students hear the performance of Lin–Manuel Miranda's song "Almost Like Praying," a benefit for the people of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria devastated the island. Students

In this activity, students discuss widespread protests by NFL and other athletes against racial injustice, consider tweets for and against these protests, and discuss how one group