Self Awareness Teaching Resources

Help your students develop self awareness with activities, printables and more social and emotional teaching resources designed specifically for elementary and middle school students.

Created by teachers, for teachers, this collection is full of digital and printable activities designed to help students recognize their emotions and learn to identify their own strengths and weaknesses. Each teaching resource has undergone rigorous review by the Teach Starter team to ensure it's ready for the classroom ... and your students!

Curious about teaching self awareness and wondering how it applies to kids in your classroom? Read on for some tips from our expert teachers!

What Is Self Awareness? A Kid-Friendly Definition

Most students are not terribly self aware when they enter elementary school, and that's completely normal. After all, any adults aren't very adept at self awareness! That's why it's so important to include these lessons in your planning to help students flex those muscles and become more aware of who they are.

So how do you explain the meaning of self awareness to your class, and how do you teach it? Let's start with a kid-friendly definition.

Self awareness means understanding yourself, your feelings and how your actions affect other people.

You might tell your students that being self aware is a bit like having a mirror inside your mind that can help you see who you are and how you can make good choices.

Explain to students that when you're self-aware, you know what you're good at and what you might need to work on so you can become your own superhero.

Why Is Self Awareness Important?

Learning to be self aware is part of gaining control of one's own emotions, thoughts and actions, and the lessons we teach in the classroom contribute to our students' personal growth, social interactions and overall well-being in the immediate future and well into adulthood.

When kids (and adults!) lack self awareness, they tend to struggle with poor decision making, and they may have trouble understanding how their behavior affects others. This can lead to misunderstandings and conflicts with peers and others around them or even unintentional harm to relationships, as they may struggle to empathize or consider the perspectives of others.

Self Awareness Examples for Kids

Explaining self awareness by providing a definition is one thing, but surely you want to dig a little deeper.

Here are some examples from our teacher team that you can use to illustrate what it means to be self aware — and why it's so important!

1. Identifying Emotions — Being able to label our emotions with names like happiness, sadness, anger or excitement is a great example of being self aware. For example, your students might learn to say, "I feel happy when I play with my friends at recess."
2. Understanding Your Talents — Another example of self awareness that kids can easily relate to is the concept of identifying one's strengths or talents. It can be helpful to consider things we can do well and things we want to work on to get better at. For example, a student might say "I am very good at singing, but I would like to practice my spelling to improve."
3. Seeing Strengths in Our Peers — Acknowledging our own strengths is only part of being self aware. It's also good for students to be able to identify (and celebrate) the strengths of others. This will help them build better relationships in the long run.