This summer I completed a series of social emotional activities built around the RULER method for social emotional learning. Over the next few weeks I’d like to share them with you! You can purchase the activities in my TpT store, or use them as inspiration for your own activities. This post will focus on expressing emotions.
This was one of the more difficult units to create–expression is valuable, but also risky. We want to help students express emotions in a way that is most likely to yield a good outcome. This unit helps students think through two things:
- Methods/Options: HOW can I express my emotions?
- Problem Solving: Which method/option best fits my situation right now?
Here’s a look at some of the activities:
The unit presents three main options for expression: writing, talking and movement. There are three suggested read alouds that can help introduce students to the idea of expression:
- In Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes, Lily gets mad at her teacher and expresses her anger in a hurtful way, by drawing an ugly picture of him and sticking it in his bag. This is a good book to generate discussion around helpful and unhelpful expression.
- In Our Gracie Aunt by Jaqueline Woodson, the two main characters have several difficult conversations when social services takes them out of their mother’s house and places them with their aunt instead. This book demonstrates how expression may not change difficult circumstances, but it makes us feel less alone.
- In Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary, Leigh writes to a favorite author to complete an assignment for school. Over time, he writes to help work through his parent’s divorce. This is a good one to demonstrate how writing can help us process our emotions.
The unit includes several reference sheets. This one illustrates ways to express emotions through conversation, writing and movement. Other reference sheets expand on each of these three categories.
In this card sort, students read scenarios and decide which method of expression (talk, write, move) would be most helpful in this situation. After students place the scenario under the header card, they discuss the questions on the header card with their group or partner.
Students write about helpful and unhelpful ways to express several emotions like anger, sadness, excitement, and disappointment.
Students read a short story about an emotional experience. Students think about how the main character, Robin, can express her emotions.
To support distance learning, each activity has a paper and digital version. The digital version is a Google Slides presentation, and can be completed using Google Classroom.
If you’d like to preview the whole unit, or the bundle, take a look on TpT!
