1/18/22, 9:21 AM Six Online Activities to Help Students Cope With COVID-19

EDUCATION | Articles & More

Six Online Activities to Help Students Cope 

Sanjeev Bishnoi - Reporting from NASA
These well-being practices can help students feel connected and
resilient during the pandemic.
BY LEA WATERS | AUGUST 5, 2020

At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, UNESCO estimates that 91.3% of the world’s
students were learning remotely, with 194 governments ordering country-wide
closures of their schools and more than 1.3 billion students learning in online
classrooms.

Now that the building blocks of remote education have been put into place and
classroom learning is underway, more and more teachers are turning their attention
to the mental health of their students. Youth anxiety about the coronavirus is rising,
and our young people are feeling isolated, disconnected, and confused. While social-
emotional education has typically taken place in the bricks and mortar of schools, we
must now adapt these curriculums for an online setting.

I have created six well-being activities for teachers to deliver online using the
research-based SEARCH framework, which stands for Strengths, Emotional
management, Attention and awareness, Relationships, Coping, and Habits and goals.
Research suggests that students who cultivate these skills have stronger coping
capacity, are more adaptable and receptive to change, and are more satisfied with
their lives.

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The virtual activities can be used for specific well-being lessons or advisory classes,
or can be woven into other curricula you are teaching, such as English, Art,
Humanities, and Physical Education. You might consider using the activities in three
ways:

Positive primer: to energize your students at the start of class to kickstart

learning, prompt them to think about their well-being in that moment, get them
socially connected online, and get their brain focused for learning.
Positive pause: to re-energize students at a time when you see class dynamics
shifting, energy levels dropping, or students being distracted away from the
screen.
Positive post-script: to reward students and finish off the class in a positive
way before they log off.

Rather than viewing these activities as another thing you have to fit in, use them as a
learning tool that helps your students stay focused, connected, and energized.

1. Strengths
Activity: Staying Strong During COVID-19
Learning goal: To help students learn about their own strengths
Time: 50 minutes
Age: 10+

Prior to the lesson, have students complete the VIA strengths questionnaire to
identify their strengths.

Step 1: In the virtual class, explain the VIA strengths framework to students. The VIA
framework is a research-based model that outlines 24 universal character strengths
(such as kindness, courage, humor, love of learning, and perseverance) that are
reflected in a student’s pattern of thoughts, feelings, and actions. You can learn more
about the framework and find a description of each character strength from the VIA
Institute on Character.

Step 2: Place students in groups of four into chat rooms on your online learning
platform and ask them to discuss these reflection questions:

What are your top five strengths?

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How can you use your strengths to stay engaged during remote learning?
How can you use your strengths during home lockdown or family quarantine?
How do you use your strengths to help your friends during COVID-19?

Step 3: As a whole class, discuss the range of different strengths that can be used to
help during COVID times.

Research shows that using a strength-based approach at school can improve student
engagement and grades, as well as create more positive social dynamics among
students. Strengths also help people to overcome adversity.

2. Emotional management
Activity: Managing Emotions During the Coronavirus Pandemic
Learning goal: To normalize negative emotions and to generate ways to promote
more positive emotions
Time: 50 minutes
Age: 8+

Step 1: Show students an “emotion wheel” and lead a discussion with them about the
emotions they might be feeling as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. You can use
this wheel for elementary school and this wheel for high school.

Step 2: Create an anonymous online poll (with a service like SurveyMonkey) listing
the following 10 emotions: stressed, curious, frustrated, happy, angry, playful, sad,
calm, helpless, hopeful.

Step 3: In the survey, ask students to enter the five emotions they are feeling most
frequently.

Step 4: Tally the results and show them on your screen for each of the 10 emotions.
Discuss the survey results. What emotions are students most often feeling? Talk
about the range of emotions experienced. For example, some people will feel sad
when others might feel curious; students can feel frustrated but hopeful at the same
time.

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Step 5: Select the top two positive emotions and the top two negative emotions from
the survey. Put students into groups of four in virtual breakout rooms to brainstorm
three things they can do to cope with their negative emotions, and three action steps
they can take to have more positive emotions.

Supporting Learning and Well-Being During the Coronavirus Crisis

Activities, articles, videos, and other resources to address student and adult
anxiety and cultivate connection
Research shows that emotional management activities help to boost self-esteem and
reduce distress in students. Additionally, students
Read It Now with higher emotional intelligence
also have higher academic performance.

3. Attention and awareness

Activity: Finding Calm During Coronavirus Times
Learning goal: To use a mindful breathing practice to calm our heart and clear our
mind
Time: 10 minutes
Age: All

Step 1: Have students rate their levels of stress on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being very
calm and 10 being highly stressed.

Step 2: Do three minutes of square breathing, which goes like this:

Image a square in front of you at chest height.

Point your index finger away from you and use it to trace the four sides of the
imaginary square.
As you trace the first side of the square, breathe in for four seconds.
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As you trace the next side of the square, breathe out for four seconds.
Continue this process to complete the next two sides of the square.
Repeat the drawing of the square four times.

Step 3: Have students rate their levels of stress on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being very
calm and 10 being highly stressed. Discuss if this short breathing activity made a
difference to their stress.

Step 4: Debrief on how sometimes we can’t control the big events in life, but we can
use small strategies like square breathing to calm us down.

Students who have learned mindfulness skills at school report that it helps to reduce
their stress and anxiety.

4. Relationships
Activity: Color conversations
Purpose: To get to know each other; to deepen class relationships during remote
learning
Time: 20 minutes
Age: 10+

Step 1: Randomly assign students to one of the following four colors: red, orange,
yellow, and purple.

Step 2: Put students into a chat room based on their color group and provide the
following instructions to each group:

Red group: Share a happy memory.

Orange group: Share something new that you have learned recently.
Yellow group: Share something unique about you.
Purple group: Share what your favorite food is and why.

Step 3: Come back to the main screen and ask three students to share something new
they learned about a fellow student as a result of this fun activity.

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Three Good Things for Students

Help students tune in to the positive events in their lives

This is an exercise you can use repeatedly,

Try as long as you ensure that students get
It Now
mixed up into different groups each time. You can also create new prompts to go
with the colors (for example, dream holiday destination, favorite ice cream flavor,
best compliment you ever received).

By building up student connections, you are supporting their well-being, as research

suggests that a student’s sense of belonging impacts both their grades and their self-
esteem.

5. Coping
Activity: Real-Time Resilience During Coronavirus Times
Learning goal: To identify opportunities for resilience and promote positive action
Time: 30 minutes
Age: 10+

Step 1: Have students brainstorm a list of all the changes that have occurred as a
result of the coronavirus. As the students are brainstorming, type up their list of
responses on your screen.

Step 2: Go through each thing that has changed, and have the students decide if it is
something that is within their control (like their study habits at home) or something
they cannot control (like not attending school on campus).

Step 3: Choose two things that the students have identified as within their control,
and ask students to brainstorm a list of ways to cope with those changes.

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You can repeat this exercise multiple times to go through the other points on the list
that are within the students’ control.

Developing coping skills during childhood and adolescence has been show to boost
students’ hope and stress management skills—both of which are needed at this time.

6. Habits and goals

Activity: Hope Hearts for the Coronavirus Pandemic
Learning goal: To help students see the role that hope plays in setting goals during
hard times
Time: 50 minutes
Age: 10+

Step 1: Find a heart image for students to use (with a program like Canva).

Step 2: Set up an online whiteboard to post the hearts on (with a program like Miro).

Step 3: Ask students to reflect on what hope means to them.

Step 4: Ask students to write statements on their hearts about what they hope for the
world during coronavirus times, and then stick these on the whiteboard. Discuss
common themes with the class. Finally, discuss one small action each student can
take to create hope for others during this distressing time.

Step 5: Ask students to write statements on their hearts about what they hope for
themselves, and then stick these on the whiteboard. Discuss common themes with
the class. Finally, discuss one small action each student can take to work toward the
goal they’re hoping for.

Helping students to set goals and have hope at this time can support their well-being.
Research suggests that goals help to combat student boredom and anxiety, while
having hope builds self-worth and life satisfaction.

The six activities above have been designed to help you stay connected with your
students during this time of uncertainty—connected beyond the academic content
that you are teaching. The intense change we are all facing has triggered heightened
levels of stress and anxiety for students and teachers alike. Weaving well-being into

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online classrooms gives us the opportunity to provide a place of calm and show
students they can use adversity to build up their emotional toolkit. In this way, you
are giving them a skill set that has the potential to endure beyond the pandemic and
lessons that may stay with them for many years to come.

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About the Author

Lea Waters

Lea Waters, A.M., Ph.D., is an academic researcher, psychologist, author, and speaker
who specializes in positive education, parenting, and organizations. Professor Waters
is the author of the Visible Wellbeing elearning program that is being used by schools
 Follow across the globe to foster social and emotional elearning. Professor Waters is the
founding director and inaugural Gerry Higgins Chair in Positive Psychology at the
Centre for Positive Psychology, University of Melbourne, where she has held an
academic position for 24 years. Her acclaimed book The Strength Switch: How The New
Science of Strength-Based Parenting Can Help Your Child and Your Teen to Flourish was
listed as a top read by the Greater Good Science Center in 2017.

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