Creative Ideas to Ease Student Anxiety

Emotions can have a ripple effect in schools. An issue at recess can spill into the elementary classroom space and cause swells and waves for minutes or even hours. What if we had a few more tools in our toolbox to help students shift from anxiety to focusing on schoolwork?

After reading Martha Beck’s Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, I started to consider how I could spark creativity and curiosity with students to reduce worry and anxiety, increase focus, and also nurture a sense of belonging, all of which maximize both academic and social and emotional learning.

Here are some ideas—including ones from that book—that have worked for me.

Having Students Use Their Voices

We can encourage focus and reduce anxiety by having students use their voices in different ways. Ask them to get silly by saying words in a really low (or high) voice, as quick as they can or as slow as they can. Have them make up nonsense words or phrases with a certain tone (tell a partner something in gibberish and use a voice that sounds like you’re talking to a kitten).

Sing a song together using the original lyrics or by writing your own that depict a class experience or area of content learning (to “Old MacDonald”: “Yesterday we wrote and wrote; we added detailed phrases“). Humming is an idea from Beyond Anxiety. Ask students to hum a favorite song to a partner to see if they can guess the title. Use call and response with unfamiliar phrases: “I say tomato, you say ketchup.”

Provide planned opportunities for laughter: Watch something together as a class, have a five-minute joke-telling break, etc. Model self-talk for students to use after a conflict (“I had a really hard time at recess because my two close friends didn’t want to play with me. I’m having a hard time right now. Tomorrow at recess, I will try to talk to them about this. For now, I am going to try to set this aside.”). Coach students to use the language during a practice session, so that it’s easier to use after a conflict. Then practice frequently and use as needed.

Strategic Use of Games

The idea of using movement comes from Beyond Anxiety, and playing games that require students to follow the leader can take deep concentration and focus. Beyond Simon Says, try these two more complex and novel activities: “Do This, Do That” and “Follow the Sequence.” 

In “Do This, Do That,” the leader gives a direction. (I recommend that the teacher be the first leader; then students can lead after they understand the game.) When the leader says, “Do this,” and gives a direction, students copy them. If the leader says, “Do that,” all the students need to freeze. Give a direction that involves grounding one’s body. Here are some examples: “Put your feet on the ground to feel your weight touching the ground. Hug yourself, then do it again with your other arm on top. Take a deep breath. Shake your body.”

More open-ended directions offer a variety of ways to respond: “Show what you might look like if you were calm, confident, curious, courageous; if you’d just solved a hard problem; if you needed help.”

“Follow the Sequence” games can be more complex because the leader provides a series of directions—for example: “Cross your arms, stomp your feet two times, jump five times, then sit down and imagine you are sitting under a tree on a hot summer day sipping lemonade.”

By playing another game, “Would You Rather?” I can engage curiosity and wonder. Ask students questions like these: “Would you rather be a bird or a horse? Be able to control the weather or to communicate with animals?” To take it further, they can draw what this would look like, talk to a partner, or go to an area of the classroom to vote on their preference.

Games such as these help students focus by bringing them into the present and getting their bodies moving. They also offer a feeling of fun and joy, nurture a sense of community, and prime them for deep learning.

Using Notes to Show Growth

Get creative by having students decorate a special box or folder to keep in their work area. Over time, they can add notes and evidence of meeting goals written by others or themselves.

I usually start by giving each student a personalized note. Then they can visit their notes when they’re feeling worried, and we can visit these as a class as needed. I might model, then have students share, write, and/or draw hero/adventure stories: “Take an experience that just happened or could happen and consider how to advocate for yourself, what you did to be a problem-solver or get away from the situation, or how you can be a hero in the situation.”

Creating or Imagining

To promote a sense of calm, I ask students to draw or imagine their favorite activity, place, food, person, etc. When they are encouraged to imagine how it smells, feels, looks, sounds, and maybe even tastes, they can focus more deeply on the topic.

Another idea that comes from Beyond Anxiety is to write your name, then write it backward and upside down. After doing this with students, I ask them to make a special design around their name (a geometric design, pictures of things they enjoy, or whatever they feel coming out of their hands).

These ideas can be used anytime, to increase a sense of calm and focus or after times of conflict or transition to help students shift gears. I also highly recommend these ideas prior to open-ended tasks, such as problem-solving, generating ideas, and/or working with others.

By providing opportunities such as these, we are helping students to recognize that all of us have worries and experience challenges and conflict and that by getting creative and moving our bodies, we are much more empowered to decide what to do next.