homework accountability sheet

• Skip to main content

Join All-Access Reading…Doors Are Open! Click Here

• All-Access Login
• Freebie Library
• Search this website

Teaching with Jennifer Findley

Upper Elementary Teaching Blog

Free Accountability Recording Sheets for Google Forms

Multiple-choice practice is definitely “easy”…as far as grading goes. If you are using multiple-choice digital quizzes, such as Google Forms that are self-grading, they’re even more time-saving. However, you do have to make sure that the results are authentic and that you are using these quizzes and assessments in the way they are intended, which ultimately is to drive instruction and assess students’ current mastery. However, that is not always easy to do with this type of digital math practice. This post shares digital (and printable) recording sheets for Google Forms to add in accountability AND make the learning more visible.

Related Posts:

How To Assign Google Forms

How to Create Google Forms

There are two types of recording sheets. Each type will work better with specific skills and each one serves a different purpose.

Show Your Work Recording Sheets

Prove your work recording sheets.

Each type of recording sheet includes the following options:

• DIGITAL Directions (with a place to LINK the Google Form) with DIGITAL Recording Sheets
• DIGITAL Directions (with a place to LINK the Google Form) with PRINTABLE Recording Sheets

Each option also includes multiple versions of the recording sheets for you to choose from. Here is an example of two different versions. One has space for 10 questions and the other five questions.

Now let’s take a look at each type of recording sheet and its purpose.

The first type is a “Show Your Work” recording sheet. This type of recording sheet is great for extra accountability for computation problems that are easy to solve with a calculator.

You would be able to view the work shown on recording sheets to see a few things:

• Did they guess without really understanding (or doing the work)?
• Did they use a calculator?
• What misconceptions or struggles does a student have that is only visible by viewing their work?

The biggest advantage to using “Show Your Work” recording sheets with multiple choice quizzes is that you will be able to see where the learning breaks down. The recording sheets would not only hold the students accountable for completing the work, but they would also make that learning visible to you to help you guide future instruction.

Teacher Directions:

1. Fill in the space provided with the topic or subject of the quiz you are assigning.

2. Link to the quiz using the transparent box on the “Click Here to Start the Quiz!” button. Not sure how to do this? Click here for a tutorial.

3. Decide which digital recording sheet you want to assign and delete the others OR pass out printable recording sheets included in the PDF file.

Note: If your students are not able to draw or write on their screens, I recommend the printable recording sheets. If you have no way of getting copies to your students (because of distance learning), you can model how to recreate the recording sheet on a piece of paper.

The next type of recording sheet is a “Prove Your Work” recording sheet and this one works well digitally as well as in a printable format (regardless of if students can write or draw on their screens).

I recommend this type of recording sheet for skills that are able to be “Googled”, but don’t necessarily have work that needs to be shown.

One example is prime and composite numbers. The student may be asked, “Is six a prime number or composite number?” Since they can Google the answer and there’s no work involved, the student could just say, “I just knew the answer.” In cases like this, most students don’t naturally show their work, but they can prove their work. By reading a student’s “proof”, you will be able to see if they truly understand composite and prime numbers.

This also works well with grammar skills. A student can very easily Google, “Is transportation, a verb or a noun?”  If you take the extra step and have them prove it, that’s where you’re going to see do they really understand the difference between nouns and verbs and how to apply that understanding to a word.

Other skills that I recommend for this type of recording sheet are skills where you want to make sure that you see the student’s reasoning. Maybe it’s not one that’s calculatable and it’s not one that is able to be Googled, but you want to see the student’s reasoning and their thinking, especially on any that they get wrong. This will help you see where the breakdown was and make the students’ learning visible.

Word problems are ideal for this type of accountability recording sheet because those are very difficult for students to Google. However, if you just do multiple-choice, a student is able to sometimes do process of elimination or choose an answer and not really have a strong understanding of word problems or that specific type of operation or that type of numbers.

Reading skills are also good for this type of accountability recording sheet. For example, theme is a skill that you want to see the student’s understanding of theme and how it connects to a story. With choices, it is often easy to narrow them down and make an educated guess. When you see the student’s proof and you see their reasoning, that’s when you know if that deep levels of learning have happened.

How many should you have the students prove?

You could use a recording sheet that requires the students to prove their answers for every question or you could have them just prove only some of the questions (that you choose or the students choose). It’s really up to you depending on if you want them to prove them all, if you only want them to prove the ones that you select, or if you want to allow that free choice.

2. Fill in the space provided with the amount of answers you want your students to prove.

4. Link to the quiz using the transparent box on the “Click Here to Start the Quiz!” button. Not sure how to do this? Click here for a tutorial.

Download the FREE Recording Sheets for Google Forms HERE

Click here or on the image to download the FREE recording sheets for Google Form. The file will open up as a PDF and the links to the digital access can be found on page 2.

Want Ready-to-Assign Google Forms?

If you love using Google Forms, but don’t love creating them and setting them up for easy self-grading, I have just what you need!

Check out these ready-to-assign Google Forms for math and literacy.

All of the work has been done for you and they are ready for you to copy to your drive and assign your students!

Shop This Post

4th Grade Digital Math Practice with Google Forms

5th Grade Digital Math Practice with Google Forms

3rd Grade Digital Reading with Google Forms

4th & 5th Grade Digital Reading with Google Forms

5th Grade Digital Grammar Practice with Google Forms & Printable Versions

Share the knowledge, reader interactions.

September 11, 2020 at 8:13 am

Would you expand on these points?

https://besvelte.ru/user/OctaviaFitzmauri/

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

You may also love these freebies!

Math Posters

Reading Posters

Morphology Posters

Grammar Posters

Welcome Friends!

I’m Jennifer Findley: a teacher, mother, and avid reader. I believe that with the right resources, mindset, and strategies, all students can achieve at high levels and learn to love learning. My goal is to provide resources and strategies to inspire you and help make this belief a reality for your students.

• Skip to Content
• Skip to Main Navigation
• Skip to Search

Indiana University Bloomington Indiana University Bloomington IU Bloomington

• Course Development Institute
• Programmatic Assessment
• Instructional Technology
• Class Observations and Feedback
• Online Course Review and Feedback
• New Faculty Programs
• History of SoTL
• SOTL Resources
• IUB Database
• Featured SoTL Activity
• Intensive Writing
• Faculty Liaison
• Incorporating and Grading Writing
• Writing Tutorial Services
• Cel Conference
• CEL Course Development Institute
• ACE Program
• Community Partners
• CEL Course Designation
• CEL during COVID-19
• Annual AI Orientation
• Annual Classroom Climate Workshop
• GTAP Awardees
• Graduate Student Learning Communities
• Pedagogy Courses for Credit
• Diversity Statements
• Learning Communities
• Active Learning
• Frequent and Targeted Feedback
• Spaced Practice
• Transparency in Learning and Teaching
• Faculty Spotlights
• Preparing to Teach
• Decoding the Disciplines
• Backward Course Design
• Developing Learning Outcomes
• Syllabus Construction
• How to Productively Address AI-Generated Text in Your Classroom 
• Accurate Attendance & Participation with Tophat
• Designing Assignments to Encourage Integrity
• DEI and Student Evals
• Engaging Students with Mental Health Issues
• Inclusive and Equitable Syllabi
• Creating Accessible Classrooms
• Proctoring and Equity
• Equitable Assignment Design
• Making Teaching Transparent
• DEIJ Institute
• Sense of Belonging
• Trauma-Informed Teaching
• Managing Difficult Classroom Discussions
• Technology to Support Equitable and Inclusive Teaching
• Teaching during a Crisis
• Teaching for Equity
• Supporting Religious Observances
• DEIJ Resources
• Test Construction
• Summative and Formative Assessment
• Classroom Assessment Techniques
• Authentic Assessment
• Alternatives to Traditional Exams and Papers
• Assessment for General Education and Programmatic Review
• Rubric Creation and Use
• Google Suite
• Third Party Services: Legal, Privacy, and Instructional Concerns
• eTexts and Unizin Engage
• Next@IU Pilot Projects
• Web Conferencing
• Student Response Systems
• Mid-Semester Evaluations
• Teaching Statements & Philosophies
• Peer Review of Teaching
• Teaching Portfolios
• Administering and Interpreting Course Evaluations
• Temporary Online Teaching
• Attendance Policies and Student Engagement
• Teaching in the Face of Tragedy
• Application for an Active Learning Classroom
• Cedar Hall Classrooms
• Reflection in Service Learning
• Discussions
• Incorporating Writing
• Team-Based Learning
• First Day Strategies
• Flipping the Class

Holding Students Accountable

• Producing Video for Courses
• Effective Classroom Management
• Games for Learning
• Quick Guides
• Mosaic Initiative
• Kelley Office of Instructional Consulting and Assessment

Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning

• Teaching Resources
• Teaching Strategies

If students come to your class unprepared, with readings and assignments not completed, you’re faced with a dilemma. You can’t do the activity or engage in the deep discussion you planned for class time, since that requires that students have done the reading or otherwise prepared for class. On the other hand, you don’t want to lecture over the material you expected them to prepare, because this simply teaches students that they don’t need to prepare for class in the future.

So how can you ensure that your students come to class prepared? The answer is to hold students accountable, with low-stakes “accountability tasks.” Assigning an accountability task helps ensure that all students can participate in and benefit from in-class activities that will help them learn course content.

If a strategy for holding students accountable is to be effective, some planning is required. We present this model below.

Define what “good preparation” looks like in your class.

What should students understand, be able to do, or have thought about before class begins? Make sure your expectations are reasonable by thinking of class preparation as students engaging in lower-level cognitive tasks in Bloom’s Taxonomy (recognizing, remembering, or understanding new material). Then in class, students are prepared to engage in higher-level activities.

Create a low-stakes "accountability task"

Accountability tasks can ensure that students have prepared appropriately. The task can be small—writing a couple of sentences in response to a prompt, or answering a few quiz questions—but it should be worth a point or two. Decide whether students will do the task in class or before class. See the list of tasks below for some suggestions.

Explain your accountability strategy to students.

• Explain the purpose of the assignment – that is, why you’ve assigned a particular reading or task. This article about transparency explains why it’s important to explain to your students the connection between the assignment and specific upcoming in-class activities as well as overall course goals.
• Make your expectations clear by explaining specifically what “good preparation” looks like. For example, if you ask students to be prepared to discuss a reading, video, or other source of content, what exactly should they do? Should they extract primary ideas or arguments? Connect ideas in the reading to previous content? Simply learn facts and definitions? The clearer you can be in what you want or expect from students, the better your students can prepare.
• In courses based on readings and in-class discussion, accountability tasks often allow students to practice skills required for major course projects (such as summarizing a text or identifying an author’s main argument, as preparation for a longer research paper).
• If the accountability task is a quiz, tell students about the beneficial effects of retrieval practice on learning. Retrieval practice (also called the testing effect or test-enhanced learning) is the widely accepted finding that the act of recalling facts or concepts from memory (as students do in a quiz) improves long-term retention of those facts or concepts. Frequent quizzes are a form of retrieval practice and thus enhance students’ long-term retention of the material. ( This article on test-enhanced learning outlines the research supporting the benefits of retrieval practice.)
• A related rationale for accountability tasks is the spacing effect (also referred to as massed versus distributed practice). Research on the spacing effect shows that retention of information is better if the information is learned in several sessions spread out over days (as opposed to crammed into a single long session). Keeping up with out-of-class reading and assignments is a form of distributed practice, which will make studying for exams easier later on.
• Tell students that holding them accountable enables you to gather feedback  about their understanding of course material, which can in turn shape what you do in class. Making this point explicitly to your students helps them understand their responsibility in the learning process.

Plan the class session to include activities that depend on coming to class prepared.

Consider what level of understanding or competence you expect students to achieve from their preparation. Begin the class session at that level and use class time to deepen students’ understanding and ability to engage with the content.

• If you expect students to merely recognize terms or concepts from a reading but not necessarily fully understand them (e.g., a textbook reading for a STEM class), then use class time to help students make sense of the terms and concepts and show how they are connected or applied.
• If you expect students to have a solid (but perhaps basic) understanding of the content, then assume that level of understanding (or confirm it with a brief exercise) at the beginning of class and move on to more complex activities that build on students’ preparation, such as examining a case study, evaluating hypotheses, analyzing a phenomenon or situation, or debating pros and cons.

For example, if students are assigned to read an article with an accountability task is to write two sentences describing the author’s main argument, don’t spend time in class telling students what the author’s main argument is. Instead, start class with a brief activity in which students state the argument and come to a consensus; then spend class time on more complex activities, such as debating the pros and cons of the argument or connecting it to other course content.

If your accountability task requires students to identify things they don’t understand in what they’ve read, spend class time providing additional instruction on the points of confusion.

What should you do if students still come to class unprepared?

If you try some of the strategies listed below and you still see unprepared students in your class, you may need to review your overall strategy and consider some difficult choices. Here are some options to choose from.

• Take some time to gather data. How many students are unprepared? Is it the same few students, or different ones each time? Are they unprepared only on certain days? Once you’ve gathered this information, have a conversation with your class, if many students are coming to class unprepared, or with the unprepared students individually, if there are only a few. Sometimes all it takes is a conversation with a few unprepared students to find out whether they’re having problems outside of class that interfere with their work. If most of the class is unprepared, you might reiterate your justification for the importance of coming to class prepared. You might also need to listen to the students’ explanations and review your task and your expectations.
• Review the preparation you expect students to do, and your accountability task. Is the preparation too difficult? Does the task need to be more clearly organized or better justified? Is the connection between the preparation and in-class activities unclear? Are your expectations regarding students’ preparation unclear?
• You may decide to proceed as you planned with your in-class activity, even if a few students are unprepared. Refusing to switch to lecturing on the material students did not prepare shows students that you’re serious about preparation. Make sure you talk explicitly with the prepared students about how their preparation enables them to complete the in-class activities more effectively or efficiently.
• You may decide to re-think your attendance grades, to count “completing accountability tasks” as part of an overall participation grade. You can also give students a limited number of “oops tokens” at the beginning of the semester. Each “oops token” allows a student to come to class unprepared on one day. Allowing your students to use “oops tokens” recognizes that life happens even for the brightest, most motivated students.
• In some situations you may be able to tell unprepared students to complete the accountability task during the class session. If the rest of the students will spent the class session working in small groups, for example, you can have the unprepared students sit together and complete their accountability task while the rest of the students work. If they complete the accountability task before the class session ends, they can join their group to work on the group’s in-class task; otherwise, they will need to complete the in-class task on their own time. And in either case you can choose not to give the unprepared students “participation points” for that day’s class.
• You may be tempted to simply kick unprepared students out of class or cancel class entirely if most of the students are unprepared. While this is an understandable (albeit emotional) response from the instructor, it doesn’t allow the ejected students to learn; in addition, it may reward exactly the behavior you’re trying to prevent. Instead, you might try one of these in-class activities that work with unprepared students .

There are many different specific tasks that can be used to hold students accountable; some are done outside of class, while others are done in class.

Accountability Tasks To Do Before Class

• Reading check : A brief writing task that can not be completed unless students have done the assigned reading. The assignment can involve a simple prompt (e.g., summarize the main points of a reading) or can be structured as a “worksheet” for easy grading. Students can turn in the response in Canvas or post it in a discussion board.
• Write questions : An assignment that requires students to formulate questions about the reading. These can be questions they would expect to see on an exam covering the reading (perhaps including page references), or questions they would like the instructor to address in class.
• Short quiz : A quiz consisting of a few basic questions about a reading or assignment, administered using Canvas Quizzes or Quick Check. This is a particularly useful strategy for checking comprehension of terminology or basic facts. A related strategy would be to embed questions in VoiceThread or PlayPosit videos that students are assigned to watch outside of class.

Accountability Tasks To Do In Class

• Entrance ticket : Brief writing on assigned readings similar to a reading check, but brought to class rather than being turned in beforehand. This can be useful if the responses are complex and students will need to refer to them in class, or if students will be allowed to revise or supplement their entrance ticket response during class. If this strategy is adopted, the instructor will need to decide ahead of time how to deal with students who come to class without their entrance ticket. (You might have them complete the task in class; see point 5e above.)
• Muddiest Point : Students identify specific parts of the content they don’t understand. The instructor can give examples of the most productive ways of indicating confusion, such as asking “why?” questions, or saying, “I don’t understand _________ because __________.” The questions can be brought into class, or posted ahead of time in a discussion board. The class can choose the questions they want the instructor to address, or the instructor can select topics to provide additional instruction on.
• In-class quizzes , using student response systems or Canvas Quizzes in class.
• Some in-class discussions can serve this purpose if it is possible to ensure that all students participate.
• Students in small groups build a concept map based on readings and in-class content.
• Students come up with an example or application of a concept, post it around the class; then do a gallery walk and upvote the best ones.
• If content is two opposing sides of an issue or 2 competing interpretations of a topic, do a continuum dialogue: designate one side of the classroom for strong supporters of one viewpoint and the opposite side for strong supporters of the other. Have students decide which side they found more convincing and line up on a continuum depending on the strength of their conviction. This forms the basis for an informal debate or class discussion.
• Peer review: Students engage in in-class peer review of first drafts of their peers’ essays. In this case, if a student comes to class without a draft, you might have them work on their draft in class, and deduct whatever points they would have earned from doing the peer review (see point 5e above).
• Modified jigsaw: For content that can be divided into discrete topics, assign a portion of the class to learn about each topic. In class, create groups in which each member has become an expert on a different topic, and have the group members teach each other about their assigned topic.
• Modified team-based learning : Assign students to teams that are permanent for the semester. Have students take a quiz in class individually and hand it in. Then allow students to take the quiz again in their teams and discuss the questions, filling out a scratch-off form as a team to get immediate feedback on their answers. Each student’s score on the quiz overall is a combination of their individual score and the team score.

Final words

Holding students accountable for coming to class prepared can be a challenge—one that may not be “fixed” simply by using an accountability task. It may take time and a combination of strategies: ensuring strong alignment between assignments, in-class work, and course goals; being transparent about assignments and expectations; not lecturing over content students didn’t prepare; and varying your accountability tasks to maintain students’ motivation. But addressing this challenge will pay off when you see the result: dynamic in-class activities and discussions in which all your students able to engage and contribute. 

If you’d like to meet with a consultant to talk about holding students accountable, or any of the other teaching strategies mentioned here, contact us .

Armstrong, P. (2010). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved on 7/11/2022 from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/ .

Brame, C. J. and Biel, R. (2015). Test-enhanced learning: Using retrieval practice to help students learn Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved on 7/11/2022 from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/test-enhanced-learning-using-retrieval-practice-to-help-students-learn/ .

Elmes, M.R. (2016), They didn’t READ! What to do with unprepared students (besides just kicking them out and cancelling class). Blog post retrieved on 7/11/2022 from https://melissaridleyelmes.wordpress.com/2016/02/14/they-didnt-read-what-to-do-with-unprepared-students-besides-just-kicking-them-out-and-canceling-class/

Honeycutt, B. (2016). Five ways to motivate unprepared students in the flipped classroom. Faculty Focus , April 26, 2016. Retrieved on 7/11/2022 from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/blended-flipped-learning/five-ways-to-motivate-unprepared-students-in-the-flipped-classroom/

Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT). Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Retrieved on 7/11/2022 from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/just-in-time-teaching-jitt/ .

Son, L.K. & Simon, D.A. (2012). Distributed learning: Data, metacognition, and educational implications. Educational Psychology Review , 24: 379-391. DOI 10.1007/s10648-012-9206.

Center for Innovative Teaching & Learning social media channels

Useful indiana university information.

• Campus Policies
• Knowledge Base
• University Information Technology Services
• Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education
• Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs
• Faculty Academy on Excellence in Teaching
• Wells Library, 2nd Floor, East Tower 1320 East Tenth Street Bloomington, IN 47405
• Phone: 812-855-9023

• fa-facebook

Math in the Middle

Ideas + Resources + More for the 5th - 8th Grade Math Classroom

Holding Students Accountable for Homework

Today I thought I’d share my new homework policy for next year which I’m pretty excited about!

My homework assignments are worth 2 points each and I grade them only for completion.  While students work on their do now problems on Socrative I walk around and record grades for each student.  In the past I’ve given out 2’s, 1’s, and 0’s.  Next year I decided to get rid of 1’s, so students will get a 2 if they attempted every problem AND showed their work.  If they didn’t do the homework, only did half of it, or didn’t show their work they get a 0.  After students finish their do nows we go over homework answers as a class and then I answer any questions about the homework.  Most of the time I don’t spend more than 10 minutes on this entire process, including the do nows, so that I have 30 minutes for my new lesson.  ( You can read about & download my homework grade recording sheet here ).

In the past I haven’t accepted late homework because we go over the answers in class so it seemed too easy for a student to ‘borrow’ a classmate’s assignment for their late work.  Next year I decided that I will accept late homework, but it will be a separate (but similar) assignment to the original homework assignment.

So…here’s the part I’m excited about.  I created a ‘Homework Accountability” Google form to hold students more accountable for their work.  While I’m walking around checking for completion, students who get a 0 need to fill out the form, which I will keep a link to in my Google Classroom for easy access.  The form is pretty simple: they will fill out their name, their reason for getting a 0, and either check off that they want to complete a make-up assignment or that they are accepting the 0.  Since all students are on their chromebooks at that time working on their do nows it will not be disruptive to have them fill out the form, nor will it be embarrassing for the student.

Here’s the link if you want to make a copy of my form and edit it for your own classroom .

At the end of the day I will check responses to the form and email/share make-up assignments with the students who requested them.  All make-up work must be handed in by the unit test day.  I will not accept make-up work after that point since the idea is that completing the homework should help prepare students for the test.

I will give students full credit on the first 2 make-up assignments they complete in a marking period, but they can only earn 1/2 on any additional make-up work they complete, to hopefully discourage students from taking advantage of the system.  While it will require a little bit more work for me to come up with make-up assignments it isn’t a huge deal.  When I write my lesson plans each week I will simply come up with a 2 nd homework assignment each night so that I’m prepared.

I am excited to try this out because it gives students a chance to explain their reason for missing an assignment (without wasting class time on excuses), gives them a chance to make up for it, and gives them responsibility as they will not have the opportunity to make up an assignment unless they fill out the form and ask for one.  I also have documentation from the student that can be shared with parents, should a pattern form that needs to be addressed.  (I still plan to record student grades each day on my own record sheets, as well, so I am not relying solely on students filling out the form, but they won’t be able to make it up unless they fill out the form).

( If you missed my post on a free homework poster you can download, listing the requirements for an acceptable homework assignment, you can find it here .)

What are your thoughts on this homework policy?

Thanks for reading,

21 thoughts on “ Holding Students Accountable for Homework ”

Great Idea. :o) Could you share the Google Form Link for this.

Hi! I just edited the post to include a link. (It’s right under the picture). This is my first attempt at sharing a Google Form link so please let me know if it doesn’t work. Thanks! 🙂

It worked. Thank you. :o)

I really like the level of accountability this creates. My school has a hard time imparting to students the importance of homework. I think the visual of having to fill out a form will be really helpful. We don’t have laptops, though. Do you think a paper form will work just as well?

I think a paper form could be just as effective. I would probably just carry forms around with me when I was checking for homework completion and put them on the desks of students who didn’t complete the homework. I think it would work just as well as long as you are good about keeping track of paperwork.

I am all for student accountability. Another thing I have done, though, is to stop calling it homework. To get students to see it as necessary preparation, I began calling it “Practice.” A tiny difference that starts to change the mindset a bit.

That’s a great idea. Such a tiny shift in terminology can really make a difference in student motivation.

Thanks for sharing!

I really like this! I think I’m going to give it a try…the only thing is, it will be another thing for ME to check each day…so it’s still more work for the teacher…I’m just afraid I may stop doing it after a while. But I LOVE the idea and am willing to give it a try! Thanks!

I agree…it makes me a little nervous to have one more thing to have to do each day but I think it will be worth it which us why I am willing to try it out. I am also thinking/hoping that after a couple of weeks it becomes routine and I don’t have to think about it.

Thank you for your comment!

– Christina

I just completed my first year teaching, and I wish I would have had this! It gets crazy keeping up with papers. I can’t wait to test it out for my second year!

Thanks so much!

I agree…I’m terrible about keeping up with all the paperwork, which is why I’m really looking for ways to streamline as many things as possible for the coming school year. Good luck with your second year!! – Christina

I love your idea! I went to a conference this summer and the speaker talked about how a school in Singapore, that he consults for, has the children fill out a form immediately on the computer when they get in trouble. It immediately is sent to his teacher, advisor, and parents. By implementing this program, it forces the student to be accountable and it frees up the teacher from having to fill out a discpline report. Keep up the great work and thanks for sharing your ideas with the rest of us!! : )

Thank you so much for your comment! That’s a really interesting idea to have students fill out a form when they get in trouble. I’ve actually been doing a lot of brainstorming lately on a new discipline procedure and you just gave me more to think about. :-). I’m planning to write about my discipline policy ideas in an upcoming post.

Thanks, Christina

I love this idea. Thanks for sharing. I am going to implement this in my classes. All students are getting chromebooks this year, so I am looking forward to using your Google Form.

No problem…I’m glad you can use it!! Have a great school year!

Thank you. I tweaked mine based off yours. Are you still going to use the post it notes or anything? Or are you using the sheet that accompany’s the form? Do you use google classroom at all?

I am still planning to use the homework recording sheet to keep track of students’ grades as I’m not comfortable using this form as my ONLY record of homework completion.

This will be my first year using Google classroom. It isn’t something I will use every day but I do have some ideas for Google Classroom math assignments. I also plan to keep this form on my “About” page of my classroom for easy access, along with other important sites/information, like my syllabus.

Thanks for stopping by!

Hey! I’m loving this idea!! Only question is what do you do for the students that are absent the day it’s due.

For students who are absent, I don’t have them fill out the form. I just leave my gradebook blank and give them an extra day to make it up.

Hi, your shared that you only spend about 10 minutes on the homework check and do now. What exactly do you do to only use about 10 minutes Going over the do now and homework takes me way more time.

I have changed my beginning of the class procedure several times since I started teaching. The way I have been doing it for the past 2 years is my favorite and most efficient:

For my do now, I post 2 questions in a google form (which I share in Google Classroom) for students to complete based on the previous day’s lesson. I type the explanations for wrong answers in the form to explain how to do the problems right. This way I don’t need to go over my do now at all since students who get it wrong get the explanations after they submit. The fact that I keep them to only 2 questions means that students should be able to finish them within 5 minutes or so. For homework, I typically go around the room and students each say an answer. They are not allowed to ask questions until all correct answers are given. Once we do that, I ask if anyone wants to go over any of the questions. I go over the first of any type of problem I am asked. If someone asks me to go over a similar problem to one I already did I tell them it is similar to the other problem. Retry it tonight and if you still can’t get it, come see me for help at recess. My homework assignments are generally about 15 questions or so, with maybe 2-3 types of problems. Therefore, on a “bad day” I really only have to go over at most 3 questions, which doesn’t generally take more than about 5 minutes.

I hope that helps!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Opinion Columnists | Guest Commentary: Don’t hold parents…

Share this:.

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)

Digital Replica Edition

• Endorsements

Opinion Columnists

Opinion columnists | don’t hold parents accountable for homework in denver schools.

Denver teachers should be holding kids — not parents — accountable for homework.

Beyond the core subjects assessed on standardized tests, our teachers should teach life skills such as responsibility, organization, and foresight. When parents are asked to manage homework for their children, it strips Colorado’s iGeneration of valuable opportunities for human development.

A year into elementary school, my after-school routine is down to a science: After dumping playground rocks out of their shoes, I bring my kindergartener and first grader inside, and ask them to wash their hands while I retrieve green homework folders from

The folders have pockets with notes, math and handwriting worksheets, spelling words, sight words, and occasionally art projects. In the back — in these transparent pouches — are homework accountability sheets, to be signed nightly and returned to school daily. It’s my understanding — based on ongoing parent-teacher communications — that I’m obligated to manage my lower elementary children’s homework for them, overseeing completion and the return of accountability sheets.

According to DPS’s Family and Community Engagement team, “Academic partnerships are encouraged between schools and families, but may look different across schools.” District-wide families should “encourage future success,” which “might include helping with homework.”

After informally surveying parents at my children’s school and other district schools, too, I’ve learned that lower elementary parents — not children — are reprimanded when homework isn’t completed satisfactorily.

And of course that’s the case! It’s an acknowledgement that kindergarteners and first graders aren’t mature enough to manage their own homework yet — because 5, 6, and 7 year olds lack the skills needed to sit down independently and do homework. It’s my job, then, to do my children’s executive functioning for them.

Let’s rewind a few decades. By the time I was assigned homework — in middle school — the expectation was that I would do it myself. Good thing, too, because my parents worked and had social lives outside of mine that precluded managing a child’s homework.

Sometimes I didn’t do my homework. I learned how to wing it and, when I got caught, I learned how to deal with public embarrassment. I got in trouble occasionally, but my parents didn’t know it unless I told them. They didn’t get notes and phone calls when I missed homework assignments because my teachers didn’t need permission to discipline me or lower my grade. By having chances to fail, I learned to manage my time and myself, while the stakes were low. My kids deserve this opportunity, too. If a child is too young to be disciplined for missing a homework assignment, he or she is too young to fill out a homework accountability sheet.

If the purpose of early elementary homework is to build habit, teachers are better off waiting. According to Sara Knickerbocker, a Denver-based school psychologist in private practice, the “executive function skills” needed to independently manage homework won’t develop until around second grade.

“Children shouldn’t have much homework until third grade, and by then the less parent involvement, the better,” Knickerbocker says, adding, “Unless homework fosters relationship-building in families.” Then there’s real value.

While little research supports the proposition that early elementary homework improves academic achievement, for early elementary students in public schools practicing reading and sight words at home might be beneficial — not for kids, but for the teachers, who are overburdened by standardized tests and ridiculously large class sizes. If public school teachers need our support because of factors beyond their control, it’s time to reevaluate the system, and think up new methods for after-school enrichment. “I would argue that playing a game of Monopoly would be a better use of a child’s math brain than a homework sheet,” says Knickerbocker.

It’s easy to blame schools and the tests, but the homework problem probably stems back, too, to parents, and our misguided attempts to improve our children’s academic success. Parents today are highly responsive. We rush lunches and musical instruments to campus when our kids leave them at home, and we demand better grades when they fail. Because too much of our own identities are wrapped up in our kids, we’re afraid to let them flounder.

When we manage our children’s executive functions, Knickerbocker says, “We’re controlling their air traffic for them, so they always have a smooth ride down the runway, and we aren’t giving them enough practice being their own chief executive officers.”

Letting your kids fail won’t come naturally, but do it anyway. Managing small things — even homework — can have long-term consequences. “At the college level, we’re seeing parental interference with adult-student academic life,” Knickerbocker says. “As an 18-year-old, your parents have no legal right to talk with your professors without your permission, and yet we have parents calling professors or showing up on college campuses, wanting to continue advocating for their child.”

Extrapolate that into the workplace, and we’re dealing with young adults whose parents submit their resumes, schedule job interviews, and negotiate raises — all of which do actually happen, and are discussed in Julie Lythcott-Hams bestselling book How to Raise an Adult. So let’s stop holding parents accountable for homework. And parents, let’s let kids screw up, and let teachers do their jobs, disciplining and grading students as needed, without fearing parental wrath.

Jamie Siebrase is a freelance writer whose two kids attend Denver Public Schools.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

• Report an Error
• Submit a News Tip

More in Opinion Columnists

Opinion Columnists | Opinion: If Colorado ties the knot with ADU zoning, the real work lies ahead

Opinion Columnists | Opinion: The “illegal immigrant” speech police have come for Colorado Republicans

Opinion Columnists | Opinion: A Biden-Trump rematch is, apparently, the best we can do — for now

Opinion Columnists | Opinion: A memo to Colorado Democrats, your assault weapons ban is unconstitutional and unwarranted

There's still time to register for the SMART Recovery conference in Salt Lake City April 5-6. Don't miss out!

• Facilitator Training
• VolunteerHQ
• There are no suggestions because the search field is empty.

Participant tools and worksheets

Explore the SMART Recovery participant toolkit to find worksheets with handy guides on how to use them.

• Build and maintain motivation
• Cope with urges
• Problem solving
• LifeStyle balance

Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA)

Performing a cost benefit analysis (CBA) helps individuals weigh the positives and negatives of a behavior, facilitating motivation, decision-making, and progression from precontemplation to the contemplation and preparation stage of change.

Change Plan

The change plan worksheet captures and organizes essential elements of a plan, including desired changes, reasons, steps, helpers, success indicators, and obstacles.

An awareness and understanding of urges is crucial to recovery. One way to understand urges is by recording them. After a few entries, participants may notice patterns and similarities about their urges. The log then becomes a road map that will help them to anticipate situations and emotions that may trigger urges and  plan ways to avoid recognized triggers or distract themselves from the urge until it passes.

Setting SMART Goals

It’s important to make sure goals are SMART: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timed.

Lifestyle Balance Pie

The lifestyle balance pie helps us to visually map out which areas of life are important to us and which areas need greater attention.

DEADS: Deny/Delay; Escape; Avoid/Accept/Attack; Distract; Substitute

DEADS is an acronym that stands for "Deny/Delay," "Escape," "Avoid/Accept/Attack," "Distract," and "Substitute." This tool is designed to equip individuals with strategies to combat the immediate demands of addictive urges, providing practical steps to diminish their power and influence.

DIBs: Disputing Irrational Beliefs

In the realm of addiction recovery, the battleground is often not in the physical world but within the confines of our own minds. SMART Recovery, a program grounded in empowering individuals to break free from the chains of addictive behaviors, underscores the importance of mental liberation through the DIBs tool. An acronym for "Disputing Irrational Beliefs," DIBs is a central pillar in the SMART Recovery approach, guiding individuals through the process of identifying and challenging irrational beliefs that fuel addictive behaviors. This article illuminates the transformative power of DIBs in the journey toward sustainable recovery.

DISARM: Destructive Images and Self-Talk Awareness and Refusal Method

Recovery from addiction is often visualized as a battlefield where one's inner demons are the foe. These inner enemies come armed with deceptive allure, masquerading as friends or saviors, promising relief, pleasure, or escape. But, as anyone on the journey to recovery knows, yielding to these false promises leads only to more suffering. SMART Recovery arms individuals in this battle with an arsenal of tools, one of the most potent being DISARM - Destructive Images and Self-talk Awareness and Refusal Method.

HOV: Hierarchy of Values

In the throes of addiction, it's not uncommon for individuals to feel disconnected from what truly matters most to them. Activities, relationships, and principles that once held significant importance might have taken a back seat to the pursuit of addictive behaviors. SMART Recovery's Hierarchy of Values (HOV) tool is designed to bridge this gap, helping you reconnect with your authentic self and realign your daily actions with your deepest values.

Role-Playing/Rehearsal

When we think of role-playing, we might imagine actors rehearsing for a play. They try out different lines and actions, preparing for their performance. But did you know that a similar strategy can be super helpful for people working to overcome addictive behaviors? This strategy, known as the Role-play/Rehearsal tool in SMART Recovery, is a powerful way to get ready for tough situations and make smart choices.

VACI: Vital Absorbing Creative Interest

Overcoming addictive behaviors is a journey that involves more than just abstaining from substances or detrimental habits. It's about rediscovering yourself, finding joy, and engaging in activities that provide a deep sense of fulfillment and purpose. This is where SMART Recovery's VACI tool comes into play. VACI, or Vitally Absorbing Creative Interest, isn't just a fancy term; it's a beacon of hope, a way to rediscover passion and joy in life beyond addiction's confines.

USA: Unconditional Self Acceptance (and UOA and ULA)

Recovery isn't just about stopping harmful behaviors; it's also about building a mindset that supports happiness and resilience. That's where Unconditional Self-Acceptance (USA), Unconditional Other-Acceptance (UOA), and Unconditional Life-Acceptance (ULA) come in. These three pillars of acceptance in SMART Recovery help you build a strong emotional foundation by teaching you how to fully accept yourself, others, and life's challenges.

13 Printable Life Skills Worksheets for Students and Adults

There might be affiliate links on this page, which means we get a small commission of anything you buy. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Please do your own research before making any online purchase.

Have you ever wished there was a guidebook containing step-by-step instructions on the things that you’re supposed to know once you become an adult?

Life can be very confusing at times.

Nevertheless, we are often expected to know how to deal with everything we experience.

Somehow, we’re supposed to know that clothes need to be separated by color when we’re doing the laundry.

We’re also supposed to be aware that job interviews have a certain dress code that we need to follow if we’re to be seriously considered for the position we’re applying for.

Possessing the necessary life skills for any given situation helps people have a better chance at coping with whatever life throws at them.

In this article, we’re sharing a collection of printable life skills worksheets that can equip both adults and students with the know-how necessary for functioning in everyday life.

You’ll find worksheets that help you develop housekeeping, technical, financial, and self-awareness skills.

Before diving into our list, let’s talk more about the importance of life skills.

Table of Contents

Why Do We Need Life Skills?

The World Health Organization, UNESCO, and UNICEF recommend 10 core life skills as the basis for a healthy, competent, well-adjusted individual.

You need life skills to thrive and fully function as an adult.

For example, knowing some basic housekeeping not only guarantees a clean, healthy, and safe environment for you to live in, but being free from clutter also provides peace of mind.

If you possess the following abilities…

• Problem solving
• Making healthy lifestyle choices
• Communicating properly
• Managing your finances well

…then you’re well on your way to becoming a functioning and contributing member of society.

Let’s check out some worksheets to help you develop these skills.

Life Skills Worksheets for Adults

1. brain dump worksheet.

Knowing how to cope with stress is one of the 10 core life skills identified by UNESCO, WHO, and UNICEF.

Do you often find yourself overwhelmed with thoughts about things that make you worried or anxious? One way to relieve the thoughts weighing you down is by writing everything out on paper.

This stress-busting exercise is known as a brain dump .

This worksheet provides the space you need to offload all that’s going on inside your head. We recommend doing a brain dump at least once a week to clear your head and prevent the buildup of stress and anxiety.

2. Developing Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is an essential life skill involving troubleshooting problems that crop up in your daily life. It often involves the application of mindful communication.

Furthermore, critical thinking teaches us how to think independently.

This printable is a compilation of different worksheets that can help you develop and strengthen critical thinking skills.

3. Empathy Workbook

Empathy allows us to put ourselves in other people’s shoes and imagine how they could be feeling during a particular situation. It is one of the essential life skills that we need to learn to navigate through life and our relationships with others more smoothly.

This workbook provides the basics about empathy and why it’s important. It has activities and guide questions to help users develop a deeper understanding of this life skill. Dedicated spaces are provided for writing answers and reflections.

4. Wall of Resilience

This worksheet helps you develop personal resilience by identifying the areas of your life that need improvement. It also provides tips for strengthening particular areas.

The areas that the worksheet recommends you work on include:

• Relationships
• Rest and relaxation
• Physical activity
• Spirituality

5. Weighing the Consequences of a Decision

Sometimes it’s really difficult to make a decision, especially if you’re not sure of the consequences of your decision.

Nevertheless, being able to make decisions and accept their consequence is an important life skill.

This worksheet is designed to help you consider the foreseeable positive and negative consequences of a decision. Hopefully, with the help of this worksheet, you can learn how to accept and face the outcome of your choices.

6. Hold Yourself Accountable

Accountability and personal responsibility are an essential life skill for success.

If you keep making excuses for your failures, you might become an unreliable person. Learning to be accountable for your actions is easier with this worksheet.

7. Self-Love Worksheet

Perhaps one of the most difficult life skills to learn as an adult is how to practice self-compassion.

We often beat ourselves up for the mistakes we make. Furthermore, many of us find it easier to prioritize other people's welfare than our own.

This self-love worksheet keeps you mindful of the ways that you can show yourself appreciation and love. ( Here are some pointers for loving yourself more. )

Worksheets for Students

8. step by step guide to laundry.

Doing the laundry is one of the life skills that older kids will find useful once they find places of their own. This worksheet provides a clear-cut guide to doing this essential household chore.

Hang it in the laundry area for easy access for those who need some visual prompts for washing their clothes.

9. Kitchen Safety

If your kids are learning how to cook, they need to understand how to stay safe in the kitchen. This worksheet provides tips, warnings, and instructions on how to safely navigate around the kitchen while cooking.

In addition to notes about kitchen safety, the worksheet provides a quizlet to check whether your child has understood the topic they're learning about.

10. How to Write a Check

Although financial transactions these days are usually done through electronic banking or debit cards, knowing how to write a check is still a useful life skill that everyone should have.

This worksheet helps users correctly write checks. It features a diagram and a blank check that you can practice on.

11. Communicating Effectively via Email

An essential life skill that is a great help for young people's future careers is communicating effectively.

This worksheet teaches students and young people how to write polite and professional emails in preparation for the correspondence they might send when they are in a workplace.

The worksheet also provides information about the various parts of an email, as well as tips for filling out the sections appropriately.

12. Helping Others

Children are sometimes involved in conflicts with their peers. Adults need to show them the skills necessary for dealing with conflict and empower them to take action that shows critical thinking, problem-solving ability, and conflict-resolution skills.

This worksheet helps students role-play a couple of social situations for the practical application of several life skills.

13. Making an Appointment

Another essential life skill that students need to learn is how to set an appointment.

This worksheet is a guide to social interaction. An example dialogue is added so students can practice the steps for accomplishing this.

Final Thoughts

Life skills are essential not only for our success, but also for our survival.

Ideally, many of these skills need to be taught early. The more life skills children and young people have, the more easily they can become contributing and functioning members of society.

Speaking of skills, here are several more resources that you might want to check out about this subject:

• Learn Something New: 101 New Skills to Learn Starting Today
• 135 Soft Skills List to Stand Out on a Resume or Job Application
• How to Use Deliberate Practice to Master ANY Skill
• 7 Styles for Learning New Things (and Actually Remembering Them!)
• 21 Fun Tools to Learn Something New Every Day

Finally, if you want to take your goal-setting efforts to the next level, check out this FREE printable worksheet and a step-by-step process that will help you set effective SMART goals .

mind remake project

A therapy and mental health resource site

75+ Free Mental Health Worksheets & Handouts

75+ free mental health worksheets, handouts, and forms for mental health professionals or self-help.

(Updated 2/13/24) This is a list of nearly 100 mental health worksheets, handouts, forms, and more for substance use, mental health, and wellness.

Please repost and share with anyone who might benefit! New resources are added on a regular basis.

For more free downloads, click here for a list of PDF workbooks, manuals, and self-help guides.

For free mental health worksheets and resources from other sites, check out TherapistAid , GetSelfHelpUK , and Taking the Escalator .

Mental Health Worksheets & Handouts

Group ideas & topics.

A 3-page handout for group facilitators with strategies for managing resistance, disruptive behaviors, and a lack of engagement in group therapy.

A list of topics for substance use groups.

A 2-page handout for clinicians who facilitate group therapy with (adult) clients and their families. The questions were developed for an inpatient SUD setting.

A list of specific topics for substance use groups, such as refusal skills, the difference between a lapse and a relapse, and fun in recovery.

A list of group openers for substance use groups; can also be used in individual counseling sessions.

A list of questions for exploring the following topics: Conversation starters, mental health, addiction, personal development, values, family, relationships, and emotions. These questions can be used in a group setting, individually, or as journal prompts.

Group Activities

A worksheet with prompts for writing a short autobiography to be presented to the group.

Intended audience: Adults

A worksheet for clients to pass around to group members so each person can write a positive affirmation.

Intended audience : Adolescents, Teens, Adults

Good for newly formed groups. Each group member writes down their “first impression” of other group members. The facilitator then reads off the different categories and group members have the opportunity to share their answers.

Intended audience : Adults

An icebreaker activity, good for new groups. Give group members 15-20 minutes to collect signatures. The first person to collect all signatures wins.

Clinical Film Discussion Questions

• Ben Is Back -Discussion Questions
• Girl, Interrupted -Discussion Questions
• Pay It Forward -Discussion Questions
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower -Discussion Questions
• Rachel Getting Married -Discussion Questions
• When a Man Loves a Woman -Discussion Questions

A printable deck of cards with 128 coping skills for managing stress, anxiety, and other difficult emotions. Each card includes one simple coping skill.

Print/cut the cards, fold, and place in a container. Group members take turns drawing the cards and answering the questions.

A printable deck of cards with 40 positive quotes that can be used as affirmations.

A printable card deck with 27 affirmations for healing and empowerment.

These cards can be used in a SUD inpatient or outpatient setting to facilitate group discussions about recovery. Group members take turns drawing a card and answering questions. The facilitator can vary things up by letting group members pick someone else to answer their question once they’ve finished sharing. Alternatively, group members can take turns drawing cards, but all group members are encouraged to share their answers. This activity works best with a working group.

This is a revised version of the Recovery Question Cards.

Rumi Quote Cards

25 cards with Rumi quotes on love, suffering, and healing.

A card deck with 104 cards with thought-provoking questions intended to promote discussion. Topics include goals, values, emotions, relationships, spirituality, and more.

These cards can be used in a group or individual setting. The last page of the PDF includes additional values exercises for journaling, clinical supervision, couples, and groups. Tip: Print the cards on patterned scrapbook paper (blank on one side).

Mental Health Handouts

4 ways to stay calm before a stressful event.

A 1-page handout with simple “in-the-moment” calming strategies for anxiety-provoking events.

A simple 1-page handout that shows the 6 basic emotions.

A comprehensive list of 12-step and other support groups , such as AA, NA, SMART Recovery, Dual Recovery Anonymous, NAMI, etc.

A 1-page DBT-based handout with 25 examples of dialectics (i.e., two things that seem opposite and are at the same time both true).

These journal prompts can also be used in a group setting. The prompts include questions about values, potential, expectations, and more.

Instructions for Living from the Dalai Lama

A 1-page handout with 25 quotes from the Dalai Lama on topics such as kindness and happiness. Can be used in a group setting.

A 1-page handout that debunks five common grief myths and provides the truth about each one.

A 2-page handout with nine creative and soothing outlets for grief , such as music, dance, light therapy, and aromatherapy.

A 2-page handout with journal prompts for recovery, based on material from The Sober Survival Guide (created with the author’s permission).

Kindness To-Do List

A to-do list of kind deeds with blank spaces to write in your own ideas for spreading kindness.

A colorful 3-page handout with ideas for hobbies that fall under the following categories: Animals/nature, arts/crafts, collections, cooking/baking, entertainment, home improvement/DIY, outdoor/adventure, self-improvement, sports, travel, and misc.

A list with links to online grief support groups, forums, and communities.

A 1-page handout on PTG and how it may impact a person’s life, and the factors that contribute to PTG.

A 1-page handout with resources for suicide , including recommended books, apps, crisis lines, and suicide warning signs.

A 2-page handout that describes seven uncommon grief experiences, such as delayed or disenfranchised grief.

A list of 38 unique coping skills for managing difficult emotions.

A 2-page handout that lists values. Can be used as a standalone handout or with the values card deck .

A 2-page handout with two exercise routines, one designed for beginners and the other for more advanced exercisers.

Mental Health Worksheets

A 1-page worksheet for identifying things to be grateful for in different life areas.

A 1-page checklist with 30 ideas for spreading kindness.

A 1-page worksheet for exploring what makes someone a good friend.

Art Activity: H-T-P Test

In the House-Tree-Person Test, the picture of the house is supposed to represent how the individual feels about their family. The tree elicits feelings of strength or weakness. The person represents how the individual feels about themselves. (Source: How Projective Tests Are Used to Measure Personality – Simply Psychology )

Art Activity: Outer & Inner Masks

This art activity can be done in a group setting or individually. Clients design both outer – what the world sees – and inner – the hidden self – masks. The third page has questions for discussion. This activity can be used to target all sorts of issues from body image to values to character defects (in addiction) and more.

Art Activity: Self-Portraits

This worksheet can be used in groups or as a homework assignment. Encourage clients to be creative; instead of just drawing or coloring, they can use magazine cutouts, stickers, photos, etc. Suggested questions for discussion: How did you decide which identities to portray? Which portrait best represents your true self? Which portrait do others see the most? What, if anything, would you like to change about your portraits?

A 2-page worksheet for exploring the consequences of addiction.

Coping with Cravings

A 3-page worksheet with DBT-based skills for coping with cravings.

Coping with Jealousy

A worksheet for understanding jealousy, its impact, whether it’s pathological, and how to manage jealous feelings.

Couples Exercise: Affirmations

A 3-page worksheet for sharing self-affirmations and partner affirmations, including suggested questions for discussion.

Couples Exercise: Our Bucket List

A 3-page worksheet for couples to create a shared list of meaningful “bucket list” items to do together.

Couples Exercise: Our Bucket List (with dates)

A shared bucket list that includes spaces to write in when an item was added to the list and when it was completed.

A 1-page worksheet for affirmations, positive self-talk, and problem-solving strategies for daily challenges.

A basic mood tracker with emoji faces.

A blank schedule with hourly slots starting at 6:00 a.m. and ending at 10:00 p.m. Can be used as part of a relapse prevention, for depression management, or as a planner.

A 3-page worksheet for substance use recovery for planning leisure activities and enhancing wellness/spirituality.

A letter template for individuals entering long-term residential treatment for substance use, to be opened and read at treatment completion.

An 8-page goal-setting worksheet for health/wellness, relationships/social health, emotional wellness, intellectual wellness, education/career, financial health, spirituality, and leisure.

A 3-page worksheet for identifying and managing substance use relapse triggers.

A 1-page worksheet for identifying things that promote addiction and ways to get rid of or avoid these things.

A 3-page goal-setting worksheet for short-term and long-term goals.

A 12-step-based worksheet for identifying and exploring resentments.

A worksheet for creating poetry; print, laminate, and cut out the words.

A 1-page worksheet for examining past substance use relapses and strategies for avoiding future relapses.

A 5-page template for creating a substance use relapse prevention plan.

A 1-page worksheet for exploring ways to resist urges to use in early recovery.

A 1-page checklist with quick tips, self-soothing, and indulgent ideas for self-care.

A 3-page worksheet for developing a colorful self-care “map” to explore patterns and identify new practices.

A 3-page template for creating a self-care “menu.”

A 2-page writing assignment for self-discovery and awareness.

A 2-page worksheet for developing self-esteem.

A 1-page worksheet for exploring motivation for substance use recovery.

A fun worksheet for creating a bucket list of things that are only possible in sobriety.

Stress Management Worksheet

This 6-page worksheet helps with identifying and exploring stressors. From there, the worksheet can be used to build a stress management plan.

7 pages of feelings words.

A 6-page worksheet for describing problem areas, identifying goals, and exploring what has (and has not) been helpful in the past. This worksheet can be used to develop a collaborative treatment plan.

A 2-page worksheet for identifying and exploring wants and needs.

A simple form for tracking daily meals and snacks for one week.

A 2-page worksheet for identifying things that are controllable versus things that can’t be controlled.

A 3-page narrative therapy worksheet for exploring a past substance use relapse.

Laminate and use with fine-tip dry erase markers.

Workbooks & Bonus Materials

100-page printable workbook for working through grief and loss.

A companion workbook meant to be used with the book Staying Sober Without God (created with the author’s permission).

Daily Self-Inventory for Mental Health Professionals

A 10th step-based inventory for self-reflection for counselors and other mental health workers.

Free Coloring Pages for Adults

Links to 15 websites with free printable coloring sheets for adults.

Miscellaneous Printables

A list of 20 openers for individual therapy sessions.

A 2-page form for case conceptualization with sections for demographics, key findings, background info, case formulation, interventions/plans, and requested feedback or suggestions.

A list of interventions (action words) for clinical documentation.

A template for tracking attendance, cases discussed, and any other group topics.

A foldable coloring book with eight different designs.

Share this:

• Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
• Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
• Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
• Click to print (Opens in new window)

28 thoughts on “75+ Free Mental Health Worksheets & Handouts”

• Pingback: Sites with Free Therapy Worksheets & Handouts – Mind ReMake Project
• Pingback: Books & Resources for Therapists – Mind ReMake Project
• Pingback: Free Printable PDF Workbooks, Manuals, & Self-Help Guides – Mind ReMake Project
• Pingback: Group Therapy Resource Guide – Mind ReMake Project

Thank you for giving away this valuable information. I am a Adult Mental Health Case Manager and I use things from here in my weekly group meetings!

I do also, but for juveniles. These tools are extremely helpful.

• Pingback: Mental Health Resources Master List – Sandeep's Mind

Thank you so much for providing these free handouts. During these tough times, I find these handouts to be extremely useful. A million thank you’s!

These valuable materials are so much of a blessing, thank you so much for the gracious kindness!!!

I’m a drug and alcohol counselor and I find this site very helpful!

It is great to see that someone else wants to promote better care for clients and therapists alike using comprehensive resources (that are free!). Thank you!!!

I love this site i am a Mental Health Professional and I find these very helpful with my group sessions.

Thank you very much!! I have a son struggling with depression and suicide. This will help very much.

• Pingback: Group Therapy Curriculum Pdf – Explore Recent
• Pingback: Relapse Prevention Worksheets - Worksheets List

This is a wonderful site. I deeply appreciate the effort and time it took to put this together. Thank you very much.

I can’t tell you how fortunate I am to have stumbled onto this. I am a Behavioral Health PSS in a drug and alcohol treatment facility and am looking forward to sharing some of these materials with our clients. I love the group activities and discussion prompts and will be using some in my next group. Fantastic resource! There is something for everyone here! Thank you so much for this. Be well 🙂

Hope you guys add a Domestic Violence section

Thank you for giving us free worksheets. It’s really helpful.

• Pingback: 10 Ways To Kill Time On A Long Flight
• Pingback: Map Your Healing Journey

Thank you!!

• Pingback: 161 Powerful Questions to Explore Values, Ideas, & Beliefs - mind remake project
• Pingback: What is mental health? worksheet - HappierTHERAPY

I am a mental health therapist and I really struggle for group therapy ideas. Thank you for sharing. Your site has been very helpful for me to find new ideas.

• Pingback: 250+ Sites with Free Therapy Worksheets - mind remake project
• Pingback: Boost Your Emotional Wellness: Exercises, Worksheets, And Resources For A Happier Life » LifeWhims

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Discover more from mind remake project.

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

Acceptance & Commitment Therapy: 21 ACT Worksheets (+ PDF)

Rather than suppress or avoid psychological events, ACT is based on the belief that acceptance and mindfulness are more adaptive responses to the inevitabilities of life.

By experiencing our thoughts, physical feelings, and emotions in more flexible ways, acceptance commitment therapists argue, we can reduce the negative behaviors they often lead to (Hayes et al., 1996; Bach & Hayes, 2002).

As an intervention, ACT has empirical bases and has become a relatively well-established part of applied positive psychology in recent decades. If you’re hoping to add ACT approaches into your professional practice or your personal life, read on for an extensive collection of ACT worksheets, assessments, questionnaires, and activities.

Before you read on, we thought you might like to download our three Mindfulness Exercises for free . These science-based, comprehensive exercises will not only help you cultivate a sense of inner peace throughout your daily life but will also give you the tools to enhance the mindfulness of your clients, students or employees.

This Article Contains:

9 act worksheets and useful resources for application, 3 act assessments and questionnaires, 3 useful acceptance & commitment therapy interventions, 3 acceptance & commitment therapy metaphors, 3 simple act exercises and activities, other ways to apply act, a take-home message.

To put things into further context, ACT has 6 central processes (Harris, 2006). If you’re already familiar with these as a helping professional, feel free to skip ahead to the worksheets in this section.

• Acceptance – Sometimes called Expansion, this process is about creating space for emotions, impulses, and feelings that we might otherwise suppress or avoid (experiential avoidance, Hayes et al., 2012). This allows us to avoid over-inflating them or wasting too much energy on them so that we can move on more easily.
• Cognitive Defusion – This is a mindfulness strategy that involves recognizing our psychological experiences objectively rather than perceiving them as perceived threats or realities. Our feelings, therefore, are simply feelings and not omens of impending doom. Thoughts are thoughts and not necessarily true, clever, or important. Guided meditations and scripts are useful for cognitive defusion.
• Being Present – Fostering an awareness of how we’re currently feeling, both physically and mentally. Rather than dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, connecting with the present is about engaging completely with ‘right now’. ACT exercises and activities on mindfulness are helpful in this respect.
• Self as Context or The Observing Self – Quite similar to the Common Humanity construct of Self-Compassion, this process is viewing our psychological and physical experiences as transient and ever-changing (Neff, 2003; Neff & Tirch, 2013). Becoming self-transcendent so that we perceive our emotions, sensations, thoughts, and more as peripheral and dynamic is to step away from the alternative—where they define us (Koltko-Rivera, 2006).
• Values Clarification – A process in which we explore and clarify the things that we hold personally meaningful. Values Clarification worksheets in ACT are often self-reflection exercises that help clients find direction and motivation, and coaching discussions can also be very helpful.
• Committed Action – This principle or process is about goal-setting, and the idea is that these are long-term life goals which are values-based. ACT practitioners can thus help clients commit to and work with engagement toward goals through action.

You can read more about how Acceptance and Commitment Therapy works.

With these processes and principles in mind, here are some useful ACT worksheets.

Expansion and Acceptance Worksheets

1. don’t think about your thoughts worksheet.

Suppression and avoidance have detrimental effects over time. As maladaptive strategies, they often tend to work against us rather than in our favor—amplifying the psychological experience we’re trying to escape. By eliciting this ‘rebound’ effect, this acceptance exercise allows therapists to help clients recognize this.

This worksheet has two parts. First, however, it helps to explain the role of mindfulness in coping with unwanted thoughts, feelings, and memories. Then, the client is instructed to:

• Recall or identify an undesired thought that is causing them to feel negative – often, this tends to be thought of as “A Problem”;
• Have them estimate and write down how frequently it has crossed their mind throughout the week;
• Then, over a period of several minutes, invite them to try and suppress the unwanted thought, any way they might like to go about it. The third prompt on this worksheet asks them to approximate how often it crossed their mind through that brief period. In this space, make a note of it so this figure is visual.
• The last step takes a different approach. Rather than actively attempting to suppress the thought, have your client spend the same amount of time thinking of anything else they like—tell them to walk around or do whatever comes naturally. After this, they estimate how many times the thought popped into their mind. This figure can now be compared with the figure from the previous step.

It also helps to debrief your client after this exercise. Some good prompts include:

• “ Tell me about your experience while you were consciously trying to suppress the thought… ” and
• “ During that period, did the thought lose any perceived importance or become less salient? Or did it become more restricting and more prominent? ”

The full exercise can be found in our Positive Psychology Toolkit .

2. Identifying Emotional Avoidance Strategies Worksheet

Emotional avoidance is another ineffective strategy that people tend to use when uncomfortable thoughts or feelings arise. As short-term responses avoidance may seem helpful, but over the longer term it reinforces the seeming intolerability of these mental experiences.

Therapists can work with clients to recognize when they are cognitively trying to escape distress through common habits like distraction or rumination (Moulds et al., 2007; Wolgast & Lundh, 2017).

This exercise is best worked through after you have introduced the concept of emotional (or experiential) avoidance to your client. If you are engaging with this exercise for yourself, you’ll find a helpful theoretical background and examples to get you started.

In the main section of this worksheet, you’ll find some writing space.

• Begin by recalling some previous experiences where you have avoided an unwanted feeling, event, or memory rather than acknowledging or engaging with it.
• Think of different domains in your life if this helps, such as at work, with your family, or with friends. Perhaps you’ve played video games rather than having a serious conversation about something which upsets you. Or, maybe you’ve turned down a great new role at work because it involved public speaking.
• The feelings that experience conjured up (Difficult Emotions);
• How you attempted to avoid those feelings, mentally or through certain behaviors (Emotional Avoidance Strategy); and
• The extent to which that avoidance was useful (Result/Effectiveness).

After you or your client have filled out the sheet, it is generally useful to reflect on the insights gleaned from the exercise. Can you spot any patterns? Any alternative behaviors or approaches you could have adopted?

Being Present Worksheets

‘Being present’ is one of the most difficult yet central facets of mindfulness. In ACT, as noted, the goal is to accept what we’re feeling without over-inflating or over-identifying with it. Being honest about our mental experiences helps us create space for thoughts, memories, and sensations that inevitably arise as a natural part of life.

3. Five Senses Worksheet

Starting with some basic mindfulness exercises is a good approach if your client isn’t familiar with the concept. The Five Senses Worksheet offers a simple practical sequence that encourages you to bring your awareness to what’s right here, right now.

• First, by noticing five things you see. Rather than getting caught up in feelings or thought patterns that might seem overwhelming, try to tune in visually – what’s here, outside your head?
• Second, by shifting your awareness to four things that you can feel. Draw your focus gently away from internal processes and start to notice sounds that you might not otherwise have paid attention to. As you step more and more into a mindful state, we can become more detached from a negative thought or painful emotion.
• Try noticing three things you can hear; then
• Two things you can smell.
• Lastly, focus on one thing you’re able to taste at this precise moment in time. As you gently draw this mini-exercise to a close, try to remember how this mindful state feels whenever you feel yourself over-identifying with a thought or emotion throughout the day.

Being present is very helpful in appreciating what’s actually taking place in reality rather than simply in our heads. It empowers us to commit to bigger goals rather than getting caught up in past events and internal ongoings while strengthening our ability to accept and overcome our struggles.

We have a huge array of mindfulness exercises that you can browse and draw from if you feel it will help your client or your personal practice.

Cognitive Defusion Worksheets

4. moving from cognitive fusion to defusion worksheet.

Cognitive defusion exercises are designed to address the (sometimes overwhelming) perceived credibility of painful cognitions and feelings. Taking thoughts like “ I’m terrible ” or “ I’m useless ” too literally makes it much more difficult for us to see them as what they are—to see thoughts as thoughts.

This ACT cognitive defusion worksheet from our Toolkit gives more coverage of how the approach can be used for more adaptive ways of relating to psychological experiences.

• Start by identifying an unhelpful or hurtful self-criticism that you or your client would like to defuse, for instance, “ I’m an uncaring partner ”. It may be hard to articulate at first, but try shortening it into a sentence that really gets to the heart of the issue.
• Let yourself engage with and truly relate to the thought you’ve identified. It might help if you verbalize the sentence you’ve landed on or repeat it mentally.
• Then, replay the thought but precede it with “ I’m having the thought that… ”, so your sentence will become “ I’m having the thought that I’m an uncaring partner ”.
• To further defuse this thought, we take another mental step back. This time precede the painful thought with “ I notice I’m having the thought that.. .”; so, “ I notice I’m having the thought that I’m an uncaring partner ”.
• Give yourself a chance to reflect on the mental shift which likely occurred, or at least started to take place. How would you describe the experience as you moved from ‘fusion with’ to ‘defusion from’ the thought?

Self as Context Worksheets

5. the observer worksheet.

More immersive exercises often help with learning to become an observer of yourself. The Observer Meditation is both a guided script and a PDF—use this to help your client transcend memories, emotions, or personal experiences that they might feel absorbed or preoccupied with.

As an example, one instance of becoming an Observer might look like this:

• Reflect on the roles that you play daily—are you a mother? A leader at work? Sometimes a team player? A daughter? A caregiver? Even when we aren’t consciously adopting a role in the world around us, we are doing so. And yet, a part of us remains constant despite this role shifting.
• Your Observer Self means is not defined by the roles you have identified; rather, it’s the constant that can view the changes taking place. The Observer experiences what you’re doing, thinking, and feeling, and simply watches.
• As the Observer of yourself, watch, listen, and simply notice any turbulence you might otherwise allow to consume or define you. Note how these experiences are constantly shifting, and try letting go. Recognize that ‘you’ remain unaltered.

Try The Observer meditation yourself to practice decentering and reappraising your cognitions (Hayes-Skelton & Graham, 2013). The full exercise can be found in our Positive Psychology Toolkit .

Values Clarification Worksheets

6. values and problems.

Author and ACT practitioner Russ Harris suggests that we can think about two critical categories when we’re aiming to reduce struggle and suffering in our lives. We can also use two equally important categories when thinking about how to create a meaningful, rich life. Using these following four categories, reflect on and write down your thoughts.

Problem Emotions and Thoughts: What self-criticisms, worries, thoughts, fears, memories, or other thoughts tend to preoccupy you? List some feelings, sensations, or emotions that you find hard to deal with.

Problem Behaviors : Describe some actions that you engage in which are harmful over time—things that:

• sap your energy, time, or finances;
• prevent you from moving forward in life;
• keep you from things you’d rather be doing; or
• have a detrimental impact health-wise?

Values : List some things that matter personally to you in the long run. Which of your character strengths and qualities would you like to build on? What things do you (or do you want to) represent/stand for? In what ways do you hope to further yourself by tackling your problems? What are some ways you’d like to enhance or boost your relationships?

Goals and Actions : List some of your present behaviors or actions which are designed to enhance your life over the longer term. What are some things you’d like to do more or new things you’d like to begin? Can you think of some steps you want to make to improve your life? Skills you aspire to build on further?

This Values and Problems worksheet is adapted from Russ Harris’ Complete Happiness Trap ACT Worksheets .

7. Values Worksheet

This values discussion sheet, resource, or handout offers a framework that clients can use to explore and reflect on their personal values. As well as helping them (or you) get some clarity, they stimulate thinking about potential life goals in ten different areas (Wilson & Murrell, 2004). After the first few examples, you’ll be able to create your own questions along the same lines.

The categories and some example questions are:

• Romantic relationships – What sort of partner would you ideally like to be? How would you describe your ideal relationship? What sort of behaviors do you aspire to show toward a significant other?
• Leisure and fun – What kinds of activities appeal to you for fun? How would you enjoy spending your downtime? What’s exciting for you? Relaxing?
• Job/career – What career goals matter to you? What kind of employment? Do you aspire to particular qualities as a worker? What sort of professional relationships do you want to develop?
• Friends – What social relationships do you consider important to develop? What do you consider an important social life to have? How would you like your friends to see you as a person?
• Parenthood – What kind of mother or father do you aspire to be? Are there particular qualities you’d like to role model for your kids? How would you describe your ideal relationships with them?
• Health and physical wellness – These questions will be based on fitness goals, aspirations, as well as the importance of personal health, physical wellbeing, and personal care.
• Social citizenship/Environmental responsibility – This category is about being part of the community, environmental aspirations, and can include volunteer work.
• Family relationships – Like parenthood above, these values pertain to relatives like siblings, extended family, and so forth.
• Spirituality – Relevant questions here will concern religion, personal beliefs about anything that’s meaningful at a deeper or bigger level.
• Personal development and growth – Reflections in this category should relate to personal capabilities, competencies, skills, knowledge, and growth.

Use this free Personal Values Worksheet to help you.

Committed Action Worksheets

8. commitment, obstacles, and strategies.

Commitment is about maintaining motivation to the continuing pursuit of a client’s life goals over time. Drawing on goal-setting theory, therefore, it helps to have clear, concrete objectives for positive ‘approach’ goals (Locke, 1968; Locke & Latham, 2002).

Using these three headings, create a 3-column grid like the following:

The Commitment, Obstacles, and Strategies Worksheet can be accessed here.

9. Exploring Willingness and Commitment

This Exploring Willingness and Commitment worksheet focuses in on one value that you or your client have identified. Whether it’s being a more patient father or working toward more integrity, single out one commitment and work through the following questions.

• What is the value that you’d like to bring more of into your life? A note: this should not be a goal, but rather something that you or your client find personally meaningful and important.
• Then, choose a goal which is related to this value—one which you’d like to accomplish, and which allows you to evaluate your progress.
• Next, choose one or more actions that you feel will take you closer to achieving the goal.
• What personal ‘stuff’ might your committed action cause to arise? Try to break these down into three areas: a) physical and psychological feelings, b) unproductive/unpleasant self-criticisms or thoughts, and c) visuals and memories.

After working on these sections, the focus is the personal ‘stuff’. It’s time to reframe these as ‘stuff’—feelings and thoughts—rather than reality, as powerful or unpleasant as they may seem. Even though they exist, we can still accomplish what we commit ourselves to. There is one more question on this worksheet:

• Are you prepared to create space for the emotions and thoughts that come up from your action?

If the answer is no, start again with another valued goal. If it’s yes, then go for it.

This worksheet is adapted from Letting a Little Non-verbal Air Into the Room , an academic publication by Ciarrochi & Robb (2005).

Below we discuss a few valuable questionnaires and surveys.

1. Revised Acceptance and Action Questionnaire

Bond and colleagues’ (2011) Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II) was designed to measure various core ACT constructs. This 10-item instrument uses a 7-point Likert Scale to assess psychological flexibility, acceptance, action, and experiential avoidance and can be used as part of therapy.

Especially helpful in interventions that adopt acceptance and mindfulness approaches, the Revised Acceptance and Action Questionnaire is a simple self-report tool to administer and score. With 1 representing “ Never True ” and 7 for “ Always True ”, some example items include:

• I worry about not being able to control my worries and feelings;
• It seems like most people are handling their lives better than I am; and
• My painful memories prevent me from having a fulfilling life.

Find the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire in our Positive Psychology Toolkit© .

2. The Brief Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire (BEAQ)

Avoidance, or more technically experiential avoidance, describes behavior which aims to

“ alter the frequency or form of unwanted private events, including thoughts, memories, and bodily sensations, even when doing so causes personal harm ” (Hayes et al., 2012: 981).

Developed by Gámez and colleagues (2014), the Brief Experiential Avoidance Questionnaire is one psychometric assessment of experiential avoidance that has demonstrated good internal consistency. It comprises 15 6-point Likert Scale Items and has stronger construct validity than the (perhaps) better-known Acceptance and Avoidance Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II) (Tyndall et al., 2018).

With 1 being “ Strongly Disagree”  and 6 representing “ Strongly Agree ,” this self-report measure includes the following example items (Gámez et al., 2014):

• I try to put off unpleasant tasks for as long as possible;
• I work hard to keep out upsetting feelings;
• Fear or anxiety won’t stop me from doing something important (reverse scored);
• I rarely do something if there is a chance it will upset me; and
• When unpleasant memories come to me, I try to put them out of my mind.

The full and original BEAQ is available in this publication .

3. The Bull’s-Eye Values Survey

This personal values questionnaire is similar to the Values Worksheet given above, however, it provides more background theory and uses different domains. Somewhat more structured and extensive, therefore, it’s a useful way to help your client both explore their values and identify any discrepancies with actual valued living.

Throughout the course of ACT therapy, it is a helpful method for tracking progress once a commitment is established.

Part One of this tool introduces four broad domains in which your client can identify personally meaningful ways of living—this is a Values Identification exercise. Included domains are Work/Education, Leisure, Relationships, and Personal Growth/Health. Below this, you and your client can work with a ‘dartboard’ visualization where they mark how they are living their life in relation to the ‘Bulls Eye’; their ideal way of living.

In Part Two, you’ll find space for writing down any perceived barriers between your client’s current and ideal life. In this same space, there is a rating system that can be used to estimate how powerful this barrier is perceived to be, from “ Doesn’t prevent me at all ” to “ Prevents me completely ”.

The final part of this survey is a Valued Action Plan—here is a designated space for your client to write down actions that will take them from where they are to the metaphorical Bulls Eye. Work through this space by considering what values-based action your client would willingly take to tackle or overcome the obstacles from Part Two above.

The full exercise can be found in our Positive Psychology Toolkit© .

Download 3 Free Mindfulness Exercises (PDF)

These detailed, science-based exercises will help you or your clients enjoy the benefits of mindfulness and create positive shifts in their mental, physical, and emotional health.

Download 3 Free Mindfulness Tools Pack (PDF)

By filling out your name and email address below.

There is no one type of ACT intervention—Acceptance and Commitment Therapy can vary from the very-short, lasting a few minutes, to lengthy interventions that span numerous sessions. Typically, they involve techniques based on the six core processes we looked at above.

For instance, expansion and acceptance interventions might include one or more exercises to challenge over-identification; similarly, they may introduce or encourage the client to practice ‘unhooking’ from negative thoughts (Ciarrochi & Robb, 2005). As an intervention, the former could be a single exercise, or it could involve practice over a period of time.

Self as Observer interventions might incorporate any number of defusion exercises, such as The Observer meditation we considered above, or they might involve working with metaphors—perspective shifting exercises for ‘creative hopelessness’ (Hayes et al., 1999).

There are myriad mindfulness techniques that form part of Being Present interventions, and Cognitive Defusion Interventions for reappraising painful thoughts, and the list goes on. It’s impossible to provide an exhaustive list of ACT interventions in this one article, but here are a few that you might find useful as a helping professional.

1. Increasing Awareness of Cognitive Distortions

Both ACT and CBT focus on cognitive distortions—the latter is geared predominantly toward restructuring them, however, while ACT is about creating space for these through acceptance. Without an awareness of cognitive distortions in the first instance, we’re hard-pressed to do either.

This Increasing Awareness of Cognitive Distortions intervention works well in conjunction with mindfulness interventions as part of ACT therapy (Burns, 1980). It begins by introducing the cognitive distortion concept and outlines 11 examples that your client may be able to relate to. Examples include All-or-Nothing Thinking , Personalization, Should Statements , and Jumping to Conclusions .

While this comes as a helpful PDF, therapists will likely find this a very useful step to work through with your client. Being able to answer any questions will be helpful as your client moves to the next stage; filling out a worksheet with cognitive distortions that they can identify.

Three columns, as shown below, provide some structure for a guided awareness intervention that will ideally take place for at least 5 minutes daily over a week. The full exercise can be found in our Positive Psychology Toolkit .

2. Acting Independently of Language

Adapted from an experiential exercise by Monestès & Villatte (2013), this intervention encourages your client to act independently of their thoughts. It’s a form of exposure in a sense, fostering their ability to behave as per their values rather than reacting instantaneously to their mental processes. So, it’s about developing psychological flexibility.

• Starting in a face-to-face standing position with your client, start a sequence of actions—jump on the spot or wave your arms, anything that they can then verbalize to you as they carry out something completely different. They should preface this verbalization with “I must…”.
• To illustrate, you might touch your nose; your client might then cover their ears while saying out loud: “I must touch my nose”.
• Repeat this exercise up to 10 times to help your client appreciate the feeling of disobeying literal instructions.

It’s always good to debrief afterward with some discussion about how it felt, and the salience of independent action which isn’t driven by language. Try not to let your client’s actions become the direct opposite of what you’re doing, however, as this still leaves some link to language rather than encouraging psychological flexibility.

A full version of this appears in Stoddard and Afari’s (2013) Complete Book of ACT Metaphors.

3. Attending Your Own Funeral

Walking the client mentally through their own funeral is a guided intervention that aims to help them clarify their values. To open the discussion as a therapist, ask your client to imagine that they’ve suddenly passed away. As the universe would have it, they’re able to attend their own funeral, albeit as a ghost of their former self.

The discussion can be used to explore what they’d like their friend’s eulogies to include, as well as their family member’s speeches. They can think about what they’d like on their tombstone, prompting an exploration of questions like:

• What they would like to have accomplished?
• What kind of a person would they like to be remembered as?
• What qualities would be mentioned?
• How would they have contributed to or shaped others’ lives?

There are numerous variations of this Values intervention, but the original is from Hayes’ (2004) vignette in A Practical Guide to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy .

A little earlier, I introduced the idea of metaphors. Let’s look at a few examples and how these can be used within your ACT intervention.

Acceptance and commitment therapy: values and committed action – Veterans Health Administration

Relational Frame Therapy (RFT) premises that our uniquely human ability to evaluate, mentally connect, and verbally communicate phenomena can be as damaging as it is useful. Closely related to RFT, ACT is based on the idea that over-identifying with language contributes to psychological inflexibility (Hayes et al., 1999; Stoddard & Afari, 2014).

Thus, ACT and RFT both use metaphors as a means of helping clients understand the impact of their thoughts and emotions on their behaviors while enabling them to reconceptualize those psychological processes in more adaptive ways (Foody et al., 2014).

Use these 3 metaphors as they are or adapt them based on your clients’ situation.

1. Ball in a Pool – An Expansion and Acceptance Metaphor

Trying to control our emotions and thoughts is as fruitless as trying to control an inflatable ball in a swimming pool.

Think about your memories, emotions, and thoughts as a beachball in a pool. You know they aren’t doing you any favors, and you want to get rid of them. But when you try to submerge them away from your conscious mind, they keep bouncing back up again to the water’s surface.

Only pushing the ball back down repeatedly or by forcing it down will keep it submerged, which takes energy and effort—and it means you need to keep the ball close by at all times.

Letting go of it will mean it’s floating around in the water’s surface, but in time it will drift elsewhere in the pool. While it might be uncomfortably close by at first, you wouldn’t have to keep struggling with it and you could use your energy to enjoy your time in the water instead.

2. The Prince and the Beggar – A Self as Context Metaphor

While our circumstances and psychological experiences might change, an element of ourselves remains stable throughout.

Picture a beggar and a prince—in terms of physical characteristics, they look almost identical. The beggar wears rags and lives on the street, however, while the prince lives in a palace and is richly dressed.

On crossing paths, they decide to swap roles for twenty-four hours; the beggar puts on the prince’s robes and is waited on by his servants. The prince changes into the beggar’s rags and gets shooed away on the street.

The richly dressed, luxuriously treated beggar is intensely grateful for the delicious food he’s served and shares his feast with other vagrants. The prince still sees himself as deserving of good food, so he steals from others. He won’t mingle with the other vagrants and turns his nose up at them.

While the two are in different clothes for a day and others around them treat them as they see them, each is still the same person inside.

3. The Anthropologist – The Observing Self Metaphor

Anthropologists are social scientists who study different cultures across the world; while they study diverse ways of living and being, they often remain detached from the phenomena at hand. Becoming an observer of your self is like being an anthropologist, but instead, you’re studying your own psychological and physical experiences.

Being effective as an anthropologist means using your powers of observation. Without disrupting or interrupting the phenomena that you’re studying, you need to elicit information about these thoughts, emotions, memories, and sensations.

As a detached scientific observer, you need to be impartial. You’re separate from these experiences and avoid merging into them to maintain your perspective. You are a separate observer.

The last two metaphors were adapted from Scarlet (2013), and Stoddard (2013) respectively. You can find the original versions in The Big Book of ACT Metaphors: A Practitioner’s Guide ( Amazon ) by Dr. Jill Stoddard and Dr. Niloofar Afari.

To this end, we present three useful exercises to assist with practices like cognitive defusion and mindful awareness in everyday life.

Therapists may find it useful to first guide their clients through the following exercises in person and then encourage them to try these for themselves as they go about their daily activities.

The independent practice of ACT activities such as these can be facilitated using digital blended care tools such as Quenza (pictured here), through which therapists can design and share the activities in either written or audio format.

Clients can then complete the activities using whichever technologies they have on-hand (e.g., smartphone, computer) regardless of whether they are at home, on the go, or in the office.

1. Acceptance of Thoughts and Feelings

This exercise is about the mindful acknowledgment of our psychological experiences as well as cognitive defusion. While it’s best to allow at least five to ten seconds for transitioning between steps, this exercise is mostly intuitive and your pace will reveal itself as you move along with it. It’s easily tweaked into a script of its own.

• Start by sitting yourself or your client comfortably upright in a chair, in a relaxed position with no crossed arms or legs.
• Close your eyes slowly and gently, then quietly feel your breath as it moves in and out your body. Note any physical sensations across your body with relaxed detachment.
• Take several minutes to notice how it feels in your chest, in your lungs, as it moves through your nose, throat, and stomach. Don’t worry about the pace or depth of your breathing, and as you take some time to be in the moment, other thoughts will drift along—just recognize their existence and try creating some space inside for them.
• As you breathe in, visualize yourself making more room in your body for these thoughts. Recognize that they are simply thoughts. Memories are just memories, and emotions are just emotions that come and go. If it helps, label them for what they are and gently bring your attention back to your breathing.
• Worries or fears might also come along, and you can label those too before once again returning your mind to the present. You might catch yourself thinking self-critical thoughts, but there is space in your body for these before you let them go again. See if you can observe them while not taking them as truth. If they persist, remind yourself that you’re only observing your own experience.
• When you’re ready to wrap up, try to end with the feeling of detached acceptance. Throughout your day, you could try evoking the mindset of an observer, rather than a reactor.

This is adapted from The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Anxiety (Forsyth & Eifert, 2016)

2. Not This, Not That Exercise

Here’s a short but sweet activity designed to encourage a Self-in-Context perspective. It’s actually a succinct thought experiment that emphasizes the transient yet continual nature of our feelings and thoughts.

• Tell yourself or your client to observe something—anything tangible and nearby might be a good start, or you could use the flow of breath as part of an exercise.
• Bring your awareness to the fact that you are distinct from this phenomenon: “ There is that breath, and you are observing it. ”
• To reinforce this sense of Self as an Observer: “ If you’re able to observe your breath, you can’t be your breath… ”
• And emphasize the dynamic nature of the observed, while the self remains unchanged: “ Your breath is continually changing, in and out, and in its very nature. But the you that observes your breath does not alter .”

The original exercise was presented by Russ Harris at the 2009 ACT World Conference and can be found here .

3. Milk, Milk, Milk Exercise

In 2009, Dr. Akihiko Masuda and colleagues released a paper that analyzed the cognitive defusion exercise Milk, Milk, Milk . This uses wordplay to cognitively defuse a painful or persistent thought that we might be taking too literally, and which may be contributing to upset or anxiety.

As a therapist, invite your client to conjure up all the characteristics they can think of which are related to the thought—Masuda et al. (2009), of course, used “milk”. So, white, cold, creamy, and so forth.

Then have your client verbalize the word repeatedly for around 45 seconds. Masuda and colleagues’ study found this an effective way of helping their participants remove the associations. “Milk, milk, milk,” thus became a series of arbitrary sounds with little emotional impact.

You might try something with more perceived emotional valence, such as “failure”, or “ugly”. Going through the exercise once more should help reduce your client’s discomfort with the term, and after a longer period, it may help reduce its perceived credibility.

You can find more on this exercise in the researcher’s original paper: A parametric study of cognitive defusion and the believability and discomfort of negative self-relevant thoughts .

Top 17 Exercises for Mindfulness & Meditation

Use these 17 Mindfulness & Meditation Exercises [PDF] to help others build life-changing habits and enhance their wellbeing with the physical and psychological benefits of mindfulness.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

By no means is ACT limited to one-on-one counseling. As an analytical and applied framework for behavior change, its potential uses cover a wide working envelope:

• In educational contexts, ACT can be seen as a means of supporting students and teaching professionals with the general pressures of academic life (Gillard et al., 2018). At a broader level—not unlike Emotional Intelligence and Social-Emotional Learning —it has less targeted potential applications when embedded in wellbeing curricula.
• Acceptance and Commitment Therapy is also playing a growing role in sports contexts, where its impact on performance has shown more promising outcomes than hypnosis therapy (Fernández Garcia et al., 2004).
• In social work, of course, ACT’s key premises resonate well with core guiding principles such as the importance of relationships and individual dignity (National Association of Social Workers, 2008). Here, it plays an important role in helping those facing bias and stigma at the societal level.
• Clinically, ACT is used in treating addiction and trauma, the latter of which brings us almost full cycle back to individual therapy (De Groot et al., 2014).

A good way to think about potential ACT applications is to consider its fundamental aim—the promotion of psychological flexibility as a means of enhancing wellbeing. With this and the six core principles or processes in mind, we’ll likely be seeing a lot more ACT applications as positive psychology moves forward.

Compared to some other Positive Psychology fields, ACT is still a relatively young discipline. It’s not the youngest, by a long shot, but there are still promising directions emerging for its application.

If ACT is something you would like to sink your teeth into, read our article Acceptance & Commitment Therapy Training: Top 17 Courses for guidance on how to get qualified.

In addition, we hope there is something useful for either yourself or your client among this article’s many resources, but if you’ve spotted a super exercise is missing, let us know. Our Positive Psychology Toolkit is also full of worksheets, exercises, meditations, interventions, and informal practices that you can access alongside more information on the theory behind each.

Have you tried any of these? How would you describe your own personal variants on any of the activities above? Let us know in the comments, or ask us any questions you might have. Happy practice!

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Mindfulness Exercises for free .

• Bach, P., & Hayes, S. C. (2002). The use of acceptance and commitment therapy to prevent the rehospitalization of psychotic patients: A randomized controlled trial. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 70 (5), 1129.
• Bond, F. W., Hayes, S. C., Baer, R. A., Carpenter, K. M., Guenole, N., Orcutt, H. K., Waltz, T. & Zettle, R. D. (2011). Preliminary psychometric properties of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II: A revised measure of psychological inflexibility and experiential avoidance. Behavior therapy, 42 (4), 676-688.
• Burns, D. D. (1980). Feeling good: The new mood therapy. New York: New American Library.
• Ciarrochi, J., & Robb, H. (2005). Letting a little nonverbal air into the room: Insights from acceptance and commitment therapy Part 2: Applications. Journal of rational-emotive and cognitive-behavior therapy, 23 (2), 107-130.
• De Groot, F., Morrens, M., & Dom, G. (2014). Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and addiction: a literature review. Tijdschrift voor psychiatrie, 56 (9), 577-585.
• Fernández García, R., Secades Villa, R., Terrados Cepeda, N., García Cueto, E., & García Montes, J. M. (2004). Efecto de la hipnosis y la terapia de aceptación y compromiso (ACT) en la mejora de la fuerza física en piragüistas. International Journal of Clinical and Health Psychology, 4 (3).
• Foody, M., Barnes-Holmes, Y., Barnes-Holmes, D., Törneke, N., Luciano, C., Stewart, I., & McEnteggart, C. (2014). RFT for clinical use: The example of metaphor. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 3 (4), 305-313.
• Forsyth, J. P., & Eifert, G. H. (2016). The mindfulness and acceptance workbook for anxiety: A guide to breaking free from anxiety, phobias, and worry using acceptance and commitment therapy. New Harbinger Publications.
• Gámez, W., Chmielewski, M., Kotov, R., Ruggero, C., Suzuki, N., & Watson, D. (2014). The brief experiential avoidance questionnaire: development and initial validation. Psychological Assessment, 26 (1), 35.
• Gillard, D., Flaxman, P., & Hooper, N. (2018). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Applications for Educational Psychologists within Schools. Educational Psychology in Practice, 34 (3), 272-281.
• Harris, R. (2006). Embracing your demons: An overview of acceptance and commitment therapy. Psychotherapy in Australia, 12 (4), 70.
• Harris, R. (2014). The Complete Set of Client Handouts and Worksheets from ACT books. Retrieved from https://thehappinesstrap.com/upimages/Complete_Worksheets_2014.pdf
• Hayes, S. C., Pistorello, J., & Levin, M. E. (2012). Acceptance and commitment therapy as a unified model of behavior change. The Counseling Psychologist, 40 (7), 976-1002.
• Hayes, S. C., Luoma, J. B., Bond, F. W., Masuda, A., & Lillis, J. (2006). Acceptance and commitment therapy: Model, processes, and outcomes. Behaviour research and therapy, 44 (1), 1-25.
• Hayes, S. C., & Strosahl, K. D. (Eds.). (2004). A practical guide to acceptance and commitment therapy. Springer Science & Business Media.
• Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K., & Wilson, K. G. (1999). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy . New York: Guilford Press.
• Hayes, S. C., Wilson, K. G., Gifford, E. V., Follette, V. M., & Strosahl, K. D. (1996). Experiential avoidance and behavioral disorders: A functional dimensional approach to diagnosis and treatment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64 , 1152–1168.
• Hayes-Skelton, S., & Graham, J. (2013). Decentering as a common link among mindfulness, cognitive reappraisal, and social anxiety. Behavioural and cognitive psychotherapy, 41 (3), 317-328.
• Koltko-Rivera, M. E. (2006). Rediscovering the later version of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs: Self-transcendence and opportunities for theory, research, and unification. Review of general psychology, 10 (4), 302-317.
• Levin, M. E., Hayes, S. C., & Vilardaga, R. (2012). Acceptance and Commitment Therapy: Applying an iterative translational research strategy in behavior analysis. APA Handbook of Behavior Analysis, 2 , 455-479.
• Locke, E. A. (1968). Toward a theory of task motivation and incentives. Organizational behavior and human performance, 3 (2), 157-189.
• Locke, L. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation. American Psychologist, 57 (9), 705-717.
• Masuda, A., Hayes, S. C., Twohig, M. P., Drossel, C., Lillis, J., & Washio, Y. (2009). A parametric study of cognitive defusion and the believability and discomfort of negative self-relevant thoughts. Behavior Modification, 33 (2), 250-262.
• Monestès, J. L., & M. Villatte. (2011). La thérapie d’acceptation et d’engagement, ACT. Paris, France: Elsevier Masson.
• Moulds, M. L., Kandris, E., Starr, S., & Wong, A. C. (2007). The relationship between rumination, avoidance, and depression in a non-clinical sample. Behaviour research and therapy, 45 (2), 251-261.
• National Association of Social Workers (NASW). (2008). Code of Ethics. Retrieved from https://www.socialworkers.org/pubs/code/code.asp
• Neff, K. D. (2003). Self-compassion: An alternative conceptualization of a healthy attitude toward oneself. Self and Identity, 2 , 85-102.
• Neff, K., & Tirch, D. (2013). Self-compassion and ACT. Mindfulness, acceptance, and positive psychology: The seven foundations of well-being, 78-106 .
• Simon, E., Driessen, S., Lambert, A., & Muris, P. (2019). Challenging anxious cognitions or accepting them? Exploring the efficacy of the cognitive elements of cognitive behaviour therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy in the reduction of children’s fear of the dark. International Journal of Psychology .
• Stoddard, J. A., & Afari, N. (2014). The Big Book of ACT Metaphors: a practitioner’s guide to experiential exercises and metaphors in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. New Harbinger Publications.
• Tyndall, I., Waldeck, D., Pancani, L., Whelan, R., Roche, B., & Dawson, D. L. (2018). The Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II) as a measure of experiential avoidance: Concerns over discriminant validity. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science .
• Wilson, K. G., & Murrell, A. R. (2004). Values work in acceptance and commitment therapy. Mindfulness and acceptance: Expanding the cognitive-behavioral tradition . New York: Guilford, 120-151.
• Wolgast, M., & Lundh, L. G. (2017). Is distraction an adaptive or maladaptive strategy for emotion regulation? A person-oriented approach. Journal of psychopathology and behavioral assessment, 39 (1), 117-127.

Share this article:

Article feedback

What our readers think.

Hi. Your Article was very helpful. I’m an Mphil internee at IPP, BUKC. I wanted to use ACT activities and worksheets for my thesis work. I want to seek permission for that. May I ?

Thanks for your question! You may use the listed activities and worksheets for your thesis, as long as it is properly referenced.

Good luck with your thesis 🙂

Kind regards, -Caroline | Community Manager

Thank you so much 🙂

Hi. Can I get an email address for taking permissions formally as per my thesis requirements?

Hi again Muniba,

Feel free to email [email protected] to get specified permission 🙂

Hi thank you for your detail article. I need a guidance to apply ACT for Teachers. How should I design my therapy? Thank you

Hi Anusuya,

Glad you liked the article! Can I clarify, are you interested in having teachers use ACT principles with students, or are you looking to work directly with the teachers to help meet their needs (and what sort of needs are these?)

Let me know, and I’d be happy to point you toward some resources.

– Nicole | Community Manager

Hi, I found ACT to be very closely related to Yoga Philososphy, did anyone else also think so? The article has been very well written. Thank you for the immense knowledge succinctly presented.

I am a PhD student in mental health in Syria My thesis is to relieve the symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome by using acceptance and commitment therapy, thank you from my heart for this useful and wonderful article    However, I cannot download the links in this article although they are very important to my research, because I cannot register in positivepsychology and am not able to purchase the tools. So please help me with that with sincere gratitude

Hi Khdrh, I’m glad you enjoyed the article. Could you please let me know which specific download you were attempting to access? That way I can check whether it’s a technical issue. Thank you. – Nicole | Community Manager

Good Evening Mrs. Moore, I am occupational therapy student at Governors State University in my last year of my master’s program. I recently attended an occupational therapy conference and saw a presentation on mindfulness by a occupational therapist specializing in mental health field. He utilizes some activities and principles found in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy while treating psycho social groups and he utilized an adapted Values Clarification: Values and Problems exercise at the end of the lecture. I really enjoyed hearing him speak and see the value for mindfulness principles to improve the mental health struggles are limiting their functional performance and quality of life. Could you please share how and if I am able to get to get access the documents in this article ? I especially would like to use the 6th worksheet Values Clarification: Values and Problems for when I am a practicing occupational therapist. When i clicked the pdf hyperlink it told me I was lacking permissions.

Hi Steven, thanks for the introduction, it’s nice to have you in the community. I checked the links in the article and they are all working on my end. The values clarification worksheets can be accessed here and here: https://positivepsychology.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Values-Clarification-Worksheet.pdf https://thehappinesstrap.com/upimages/Complete_Worksheets_2014.pdf

Thank you very much! Over the years “perspectives…..another way to look at this” has proven to be an invaluable counselling tool. ACT and all of the information you kindly provided here fit well into this . B Gilmore Victoria BC

Barbara, thank you for your kind words. I personally am a big fan of ACT and try my very best to use it in my own day-to-day. All the best, Cath

Let us know your thoughts Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Related articles

The Empty Chair Technique: How It Can Help Your Clients

Resolving ‘unfinished business’ is often an essential part of counseling. If left unresolved, it can contribute to depression, anxiety, and mental ill-health while damaging existing [...]

29 Best Group Therapy Activities for Supporting Adults

As humans, we are social creatures with personal histories based on the various groups that make up our lives. Childhood begins with a family of [...]

47 Free Therapy Resources to Help Kick-Start Your New Practice

Setting up a private practice in psychotherapy brings several challenges, including a considerable investment of time and money. You can reduce risks early on by [...]

Read other articles by their category

• Body & Brain (49)
• Coaching & Application (57)
• Compassion (26)
• Counseling (51)
• Emotional Intelligence (24)
• Gratitude (18)
• Grief & Bereavement (21)
• Happiness & SWB (40)
• Meaning & Values (26)
• Meditation (20)
• Mindfulness (45)
• Motivation & Goals (45)
• Optimism & Mindset (34)
• Positive CBT (29)
• Positive Communication (20)
• Positive Education (47)
• Positive Emotions (32)
• Positive Leadership (18)
• Positive Parenting (4)
• Positive Psychology (33)
• Positive Workplace (37)
• Productivity (17)
• Relationships (46)
• Resilience & Coping (37)
• Self Awareness (21)
• Self Esteem (38)
• Strengths & Virtues (32)
• Stress & Burnout Prevention (34)
• Theory & Books (46)
• Therapy Exercises (37)
• Types of Therapy (64)