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World Mental Health Day helps you block time on the calendar to introduce students to topics like emotions, stress, and well-being. These mental health activities for students connect to ELA, STEM, and social studies so you can explore the topic in any class, without deviating from the skills you need to teach.
ELA lessons can give students multimodal ways to explore mental health topics through research, writing, and paired text activities. Explore these selections to choose an activity that’s right for your class.
Mental health education matters in school because it affects how students understand themselves, connect with others, and face challenges throughout the day. In ELA, research activities can give them a structured way to explore the topic with evidence instead of relying on opinions or assumptions.
This mental health research project, designed for high schoolers, invites students to investigate what mental health is and what kind of support is available for young people.
Use this ELA research sequence when you want students to explore why mental health matters, what challenges young people may face, and where people can find support.
Focus prompt
What does it mean to have good mental health, and what can people do to support it?
Warm-up
Have students respond silently to the focus prompt, share their thinking in small groups, and then bring a few reflections into a whole-class discussion before reading.
Research topic 1
Ask students to research mental health trends, the role of alcohol and drug use, and what depression is. As they read, have them collect evidence that helps explain why mental health is part of overall health.
Open topicResearch topic 2
Have students investigate how social media affects mental health, where young people can find help, how schools address mental health, and how students can support others.
Open topicSynthesis
Have students use a graphic organizer to organize their evidence. Then ask them to synthesize their findings in a research essay, presentation, public service announcement, or another teacher-approved format.
Graphic organizers and worksheets
Use these linked resources to support students as they narrow a topic, collect evidence, synthesize ideas, cite sources, and present what they learned.
Use these organizers before and during reading to help students choose a focus and track what they notice.
Use these tools to help students compare perspectives, identify problems and solutions, and plan an evidence-based essay.
Use these resources when students are ready to cite sources, teach classmates, or turn their findings into a PSA.
Students can research teen mental health through topics that connect to their everyday social lives like bullying, friendship, or social media. This research can help them move from knowing these issues exist to forming a claim that they can back up with evidence.
This research project is great for middle and high school students when you want them to investigate how teen experiences, relationships, and mental health overlap. They can synthesize their research in an essay, presentation, or any other format you approve.
Use this ELA research sequence to help students investigate contemporary teen issues such as bullying, friendships, relationships, social media, and mental health. Students choose a focused topic, gather evidence, and synthesize what they learn in a research essay, presentation, public service announcement, or another teacher-approved format.
Focus prompt
What teen mental health or social issue do you want to understand more deeply?
Warm-up
Have students respond silently to the question “What does it mean to have good mental health?” Then ask them to share their ideas in small groups before bringing a few reflections into a whole-class discussion.
ELA research topics
Use these Newsela ELA topic paths to help students choose a focused research direction and connect mental health to real issues teens may encounter.
| Resource | Purpose | Sample research questions |
|---|---|---|
| Bullying | Helps students investigate bullying as a social issue and consider what people can do to prevent harm. |
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| Healthy Relationships | Gives students a way to explore empathy, communication, and the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. |
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| Mental Health | Supports research into children’s mental health trends, friendship, and factors that may affect teens’ mental health. |
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Synthesis
Have students synthesize their findings in a formal research essay, research presentation, public service announcement, or another format you approve. Ask them to include the research topic and question they explored, the most important facts they learned, properly cited evidence from several sources, and a reflection on the research process.
Graphic organizers and worksheets
Use these linked resources from the teen issues research project to support students as they choose a topic, gather evidence, synthesize information, cite sources, and present what they learned.
Use these organizers to help students choose a focused research direction and begin noticing patterns in what they read.
Use these tools to help students compare perspectives, organize problems and solutions, and shape their evidence into a clear argument.
Use these resources when students are ready to cite sources, teach classmates, or turn their findings into a public service announcement.
Paired texts help students discuss mental health issues by giving them different entry points into the same theme. One text may show students a character’s experience, and another may give them informational context or a broader perspective they can use to deepen the conversation.
ELA paired texts
Use these Newsela ELA paired text sets to help students compare literary and informational perspectives, discuss how texts connect, and support their thinking with evidence.
| Text Set | Why use it | Select resources |
|---|---|---|
| “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Mental Health | Helps students connect a narrator’s troubling loss of reality to informational context about mental illness and chronic diseases. |
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| “The Ship of Wheat” and Happiness | Gives students a literary and informational pairing for exploring what makes people happy and how happiness can be understood across contexts. |
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Graphic organizers
After students read and annotate both texts, use one of these worksheets to help them compare main ideas, genre, text structure, author’s purpose, and supporting details.
Use these organizers when students are ready to synthesize what both texts say about the shared topic.
Literature can help students explore emotions that can be hard to define. Poems and stories give them a shared character, speaker, or image they can point to while discussing abstract emotions like joy, hope, grief, or resilience.
These resources from the Life Skills Through Literature collection can help students examine how writers represent emotional complexity. Choose which emotion you want students to cover or let them choose their own path.
ELA literature lessons
Use these Newsela ELA Lesson Sparks to help students discuss complex emotions through poetry, fiction, metaphor, and evidence-based reflection.
| Text Set | What students explore | Select resources | Paired support |
|---|---|---|---|
| How We Choose Joy Amid Pain | Students read Angelo Geter’s poem “Praise” and examine how juxtaposition and irony show that people can notice beauty even when life includes pain. |
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| Ups and Downs of Grief | Students read about Izzie, who feels sadness while remembering happy memories, and use the story to identify conflicting emotions that can be part of grief. |
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| “Instructions on Not Giving Up” | Students read Ada Limón’s poem and explore how trees in spring become a metaphor for accepting hardship, continuing to grow, and maintaining hope. |
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Sandra Cisneros uses writing as therapy by turning memory, identity, and culture into material she can examine on the page. For students, the activity helps them trace how one writer describes the emotional and cultural role writing plays in her life.
ELA author study
Use this activity with grades 8 and 9 to help students examine how Sandra Cisneros describes writing, culture, solitude, and identity.
Compelling question
How can reading and writing be therapeutic?
Core article
Have students read about Sandra Cisneros’ journey to becoming a writer and how she came to understand herself as “the ambassador of everything.”
Annotation focus
Highlight examples of Cisneros using writing to connect with her culture. Ask students to notice how writing helps her represent family, community, language, or identity.
Highlight details that explain Cisneros’ role as “the ambassador of everything”. In annotations, students should explain how that role affects her.
Text-dependent response questions
Extension resources
Use these follow-up resources when students are ready to compare author experiences or map evidence about Cisneros’ thoughts, feelings, words, and actions.
Ask students to read about Toni Morrison and make two text-to-text connections between the authors’ experiences.
Have students use evidence from the article to complete an Empathy Map for Sandra Cisneros.
In a classroom lesson, emotional intelligence means helping students understand how emotions affect daily life and health, then apply what they read to their own choices and relationships. This activity, created by 7th-grade ELAR teacher Angela Murray, works best as a read-and-reflect routine.
ELA emotional intelligence lesson
Use this one-lesson activity with grades 6–8 to help students read about emotional intelligence, choose related articles, and apply what they learn to their own lives.
Compelling question
How can your emotions affect your daily life and health?
Standards alignment
Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.
Start here
Have students read the playbook first, using one color to highlight information that feels true for them and another color to highlight information that does not feel true for them.
Reading and annotation focus
Highlight details from the playbook that feel true or not true for you. This helps students connect the reading to their own emotional experiences.
After students choose two additional articles, have them highlight new information they learned about emotions.
In annotations, students explain how the new information could help them manage or understand their emotions.
Writing response
Ask students to write a two- or three-paragraph response explaining how what they learned about emotions and emotional intelligence can help them manage their own emotions. Students should cite and explain textual evidence from their reading.
Extension
Have students think about a past conflict or argument with a friend or family member. Then ask them to explain how they could have approached that conflict differently now that they have learned more about emotions and emotional intelligence.
Student reading choices
After students read the playbook, have them choose two additional articles from the text set to build background on stress, empathy, compassion, mental health, and well-being.
| Resource | Reading Level | Spanish? |
|---|---|---|
| Dealing with stress and strong emotions | 600L–1300L | Yes |
| Emotional intelligence playbook | 810L–890L | Yes |
| In an angry America, a new remedy emerges: compassion | 400L–1170L | Yes |
| If you’re empathetic, it might be genetic | 590L–1470L | Yes |
| Wellness center supports students’ mental and emotional health at high school | 570L–1240L | Yes |
| Well-being matters | 980L |
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Growth mindset activities can support student well-being by helping them connect effort, motivation, goal setting, and confidence. In this mini-unit, created by 6th-grade humanities teacher Tracy Pompei, students don’t just read about success or motivation. They’ll use sketch notes to process what they learn and then apply it to a goal that matters to them.
ELA growth mindset mini-unit
Use this mini-unit to help students explore what motivates people, what a growth mindset looks like, and how visual note-taking can help them remember and apply important ideas.
Essential question
Students investigate why some people strive toward goals and dreams while others may feel less motivated.
Standards alignment
Have students choose a sketch-note video and practice using visuals, colors, fonts, and sectioning to capture important ideas.
Students choose an article and use sketch-noting strategies to track the most important ideas, surprises, and the author’s main takeaway.
Students write a “BIG FAT GOAL,” then draw sketch notes that show what they learned and what they can do to grow as learners.
Student reading choices
Use these resources to help students build background on mindset, the brain, talent, confidence, goal setting, and curiosity.
| Resource | Reading Level | Spanish? |
|---|---|---|
| Why your mindset matters Article | 580L–1020L | Yes |
| This is your brain Explainer | 560L–1420L | Yes |
| Musical Genius: Is it talent or practice? Article | 360L–990L | Yes |
| Sensory regions of the brain Infographic | 1030L | |
| Marcus Davenport had to learn to see his own enormous potential Article | 420L–970L | Yes |
| How to set goals Explainer | 380L–940L | Yes |
| Curiosity prepares the brain for better learning Article | 580L–1220L | Yes |
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Extension
Extend the mini-unit with the Why Mindset Matters lesson from the Brain Science collection.
STEM lessons can help students connect mental health to observable science concepts like stress, brain function, and emotional regulation. Explore activities and lessons you can use to drive these concepts home and tie them to topics you already plan to teach.
Meditation can give students a way to examine the connection between stress, attention, and mental health. In STEM class, you can cover this topic by asking students to investigate how meditation may affect their body and mind, and then evaluate whether the practice belongs in schools.
STEM classroom routine
Use this routine to help students ask questions about meditation, read evidence from schools using meditation breaks, and explain whether a meditation program could work in their own school.
Have students use Think, Puzzle, Explore to record what they know about meditation, what questions they have, and how they could learn more.
As students read the meditation article, ask them to highlight what schools are doing in one color and how meditation is affecting students and teachers in another.
Students write to their principal explaining whether a meditation program would be a good idea and how it could work at their school.
Lesson resources
The article links support the reading and extension. The worksheet links support inquiry, letter writing, and reflection.
Use these links for the core lesson, article annotation, and optional meditation extension.
Use these PDFs to help students organize prior knowledge, draft their letter, and reflect after trying a meditation technique.
Extension reflection
After trying one meditation technique, students use sensory writing to reflect: Would you consider making meditation part of your daily routine? Why or why not?
Awe walks can help students study happiness by turning an everyday action into a science-backed inquiry about emotions. They’ll explore what awe feels like, how scientists study it, and why noticing awe more often may connect to happiness.
Studying music therapy gives students a way to look at the link between sound, emotion, and the brain. In this activity, students start by listening to short music clips and noticing their emotional responses. Then, they’ll read about music therapy and related research to investigate how music can affect mood, memory, and attention.
Students can evaluate stress management strategies by looking for two things: What causes stress and what people can do in response to it. This makes the activity more than a list of calming tips. Instead, it asks them to compare strategies, consider which ones might work for them, and support their thinking with evidence.
For elementary students, mental health lessons can start with student-friendly definitions on topics like how people notice, understand, and respond to thoughts, feelings, or challenges. This activity by educator Chelsea Izzo can help them build the language to talk about mental health, how it affects people their age, and how to explain their needs in their own words.
Use these elementary, middle school, and high school text sets when you want to focus on mental health lessons that match students’ developmental needs. The elementary set focuses on self-awareness, while the middle and high school sets move into self-care, stress management, and emotional health issues.
Generation Genius videos can act as short science anchors before jumping into deeper discussions about stress, emotions, or the human brain and body. Connections are strongest when they focus on biological or systems ideas like senses, brain processing, or interdependence.
Social studies mental health activities can help students think about how these topics affect groups, systems, and cultures. By digging into sociology and psychology, students can connect their own feelings and wonderings to those of larger social groups or populations.
Sociology helps students study mental health themes through a social lens. Instead of focusing only on individual feelings or choices, they’ll examine how culture, social groups, and expectations can shape human behavior.
Psychology helps students study mental health with more precise language. Instead of using vague observations like “I feel stressed” or “people act differently,” they can explain why these things happen and consider how to adapt to them.
As you plan beyond October, Newsela Learning Suite offers so many more articles, videos, and activities to address personal and social issues in the classroom. That makes it easier to revisit themes like mental health, self-management, and responsible decision-making throughout the year.
Sign up for Newsela for free and start your 45-day trial of premium content to access more resources for World Mental Health Day and other mental health topics you may teach in your classroom.
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Key Takeaways