SEL Writing Activity : You Light Up this Room Compliments

Inside: Use this SEL Writing Activity: You Light Up this Room to connect writing and social emotional learning with how to give compliments.

In a classroom of 20-35 students, it’s easy for students to feel lost or feel like they aren’t valued as a member of the class.

But if we want our kids to feel heard, seen, valued, welcomed, and liked, we have to intentionally make sure they know how much we hear, see, value, welcome, and like them.

And we know it is easy to tear someone down and make them feel less than…especially out on the playground, in the halls, and when adults are less present. Kids will start to believe the words and the critiques, criticisms, and put-downs will become their inner voice.

But we can do something about it.

We can fill them up with the positive words they need to hear to turn it around, build up their confidence and their self-esteem.

We can remind them of all the wonderful qualities they have so in the moments of self-doubt or when faced with unkindness, they can stay mentally strong.

One way we can help kids is with this SEL Writing Activity: You Light Up this Room.

Families, classrooms and scout groups can use this to build up kids’ confidence and self-esteem, while learning how to use positive adjectives to compliment others.

Other Ways to Teach Kids How to Compliment Others

We can connect social emotional learning to any holiday, any season and any learning skill.

That’s why it’s so easy to “sneak” in social emotional learning because it can be taught at the same time as other skills like writing and using adjectives.

Here are a few ways to teach kids how to compliment others.

We can create a Compliment Box in our classrooms where students write notes to each other, like these Compliment Cards.

We can also use these Lift You Up Balloon Notecards.

We can build them up in summer with these Compliment Suns.

In the spring, we can make these Friendship Flowers.

And in December, we can use this Christmas Light Writing Activity: You Light Up this Room to build up self-esteem and work on complimenting others.

But we can also use this lightbulb SEL Writing Activity: You Light Up This Room.

How to Use the SEL Writing Activity: You Light Up This Room

1. Download and print out the lights you wish to use: color or black and white and I light up or You light up on cardstock (download it below).

Write students’ names on the back of the lightbulb.

2. Brainstorm positive adjectives or attributes we could use to describe classmates on the board such as:

hard worker
fun
funny
kind
friendly
good friend
good at ____
creative
helpful
thoughtful
generous
athletic
fast
responsible
joyful
caring
curious

3. Have students go around the room and use the list of words for inspiration to write one positive adjective/phrase on each classmate’s lightbulb.

Encourage them to use different phrases so the same phrase isn’t repeated over and over on the same light bulb.

4. If you write in pencil, you can trace over the words in sharpie.

5. Each student can also write one positive thing about themselves on their own light to help build their self-confidence.

6. To share the positive words, encourage students to read what their classmates wrote about them and remind students that all together, everyone helps light up the classroom and make it special.

7. Cut out the lights.

8. To display the lights, you can:

make a garland that can be hung up on a wall or across a room.
attach them to a bulletin board as a decoration or down the hallway.
bind the students’ lightbulbs into a classroom book to put in your classroom.
use them to decorate your door for spirit contests
sse the words, “THIS CLASS SURE IS BRIGHT!” with them (and teach your kids the multiple meanings!)