Relationship Skills Teaching Resources

Help students build their relationship skills this school year with activities, games and more resources designed to support the CASEL framework and your lesson plans.

This collection of elementary and middle school teaching resources was created by the expert teachers of Teach Starter for teachers like you to help students build the skills they need to manage relationships with classmates and school staff, as well as those important friendships, family bonds and more out in the real world.

Set your students up for success with team-building activities that promote collaboration and provide opportunities for your students to work together, communicate effectively and solve problems as a team. Explore friendship activities that explore how to be a good friend. Browse printable games that teach students how to resolve conflicts with friends and teammates and a whole lot more.

Are you new to teaching relationship skills, or maybe you're just looking for fresh ideas to help your students manage relationships in your classroom and their lives? Read on for a primer from our teacher team!

What Are Relationship Skills?

We're going to start simple here, but bear with us! When it comes to teaching anything, it helps to step back and look at what's at the heart of the topic.

Relationship skills are the abilities and behaviors that enable our students (and ourselves!) to interact effectively with others, build and maintain positive relationships and navigate social situations successfully.

Simple enough, right? Like much of the SEL curriculum, there are a variety of "skills" that are intertwined here, but these are the core concepts our teacher team considers part of relationship skills:

• Communication
• Friendship
• Empathy
• Cooperation
• Conflict resolution
• Problem-solving

Of course, these will tie back to other topics within SEL. For example, it takes social awareness to show empathy, and it takes decision-making skills to resolve conflict.