The concept behind mood rings is as strange as it is fun–do we need a device to tell us our mood, isn’t some mild self-refection a more direct route? Well, yes, but mood rings are FUN. And, recognizing feelings isn’t always straightforward. As part of my RULER bundle (RULER is a social-emotional acronym, you can read about it here) I created several feeling diaries for students. The most fun diary features mood rings. I thought I’d make a simpler version and post it on TpT as a freebie. It would make a great intro to the RULER acronym and the mood meter. If you’d like to give the RULER acronym…
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How to Build a Happy, Emotionally Intelligent Classroom with the RULER Acronym
We all care about our student’s emotional lives and we do things in the background to help them out–create a welcoming atmosphere, develop positive relationships with them, and help them develop positive relationships with each other. Marc Brackett’s book, Permission to Feel, contains an excellent tool for explicitly nourishing students’ emotional lives. The RULER acronym gives you a way to teach and talk about emotional regulation with your students. Over the last few months I’ve created a series of blog posts on the RULER acronym found in Brackett’s book. Here’s a round up of the posts: Intro to the Ruler Acronym Intro to the Mood Meter Help Students Recognize Emotions…
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8 Activities to Scaffold Emotional Regulation in the Classroom
The RULER acronym ends with R for emotional regulation. Regulation strategies help us adjust our emotional state so that it’s not too overwhelming for us. This doesn’t mean we can control our emotions, making negative emotions disappear at will. But it does mean we don’t have to be controlled by them. The classroom can be an overwhelming place, and students benefit from being explicitly taught regulation skills. Here’s some activities that can help scaffold students ability to choose a regulation strategy to fit their emotional state: Here’s a master list of regulation strategies. Students dig deeper into each category with the following activities: These activities are included in my RULER…
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Expressing Emotions, Social-Emotional Activities, RULER
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?…
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Labeling Emotions, Social-Emotional Activities, RULER
Last month 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 labeling emotions. This unit is my favorite in the RULER bundle because it’s all about building an emotional vocabulary, and it lends itself well to some of your usual vocabulary activities. Here’s a peek at some of them: Here’s another feelings journal that expands on the ones in the recognizing and understanding units. Now students find themselves on the mood meter,…
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Understanding Emotions, Social-Emotional Activities, RULER
Last month 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 understanding emotions. Read Aloud: There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon Reading There’s No Such Thing as a Dragon by Jack Kent is a great way to introduce this concept. In the book, Billy Bixby wakes up to find a small dragon at the foot of his bed. He tells his mom about the dragon, but she claims there’s no such…
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Regulating Emotions, Social-Emotional Learning (part 5)
Here we are the last step of the RULER method–regulation! A quick note before we complete this little series. You’ve probably already noticed that a linear process (recognize, then understand, then label, then express, then regulate) doesn’t completely match how we experience and respond to our emotions. The RULER method is a way of teaching these skills in a logical order, but the steps don’t necessarily need to be carried out in this order. Once students have the skills, they can apply them as they see fit! Okay here we go, on to regulation. What is Emotional Regulation? We regulate our emotions when we try to adjust them in some…
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Expressing Emotions, Social Emotional Learning (RULER, part 4)
The first three steps of the RULER method–recognize, understand, and label emotions–seem fairly straightforward and academic compared to the next two–express and regulate. Here is where the emotion comes out, and there’s a lot of potential for both healing and harm. So if there’s danger in expressing emotions, why should we (teachers) even go there? Because one way or another, kids are going to express their emotions. The questions isn’t if our students will express their emotions, the question is: will they express themselves in ways that are helpful or unhelpful? So in this post we’ll talk about helping students express their emotions in ways that are appropriate, healthy, and…
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Labeling Emotions, Social-Emotional Learning (RULER, part 3)
All this talk about social emotional learning may make you nervous. Sure, you say, I’m a professional…but I’m not a professional therapist. Fair point, but emotional intelligence can be taught–and you are a professional teacher. All this to say that this next skill, labeling emotions, is the easiest to teach using traditional (read: non-therapy) teaching methods. Labeling emotions comes down to developing and using an extensive emotional vocabulary. And whomever you are (assuming you’re a teacher), you have a lot of experience with expanding student’s vocabularies. Labeling Emotions: What it Means & Why it’s Important We label an emotion when we describe it using the most precise word we can…
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Understanding Emotions, Social-Emotional Learning (RULER, part 2)
Once we’ve recognized (noticed) our feelings, we can try to understand them. This can be more difficult then it sounds, especially at school. Classrooms are busy and emotional resources are stretched thin (1 teacher:26 kids). Understanding takes time and energy, and both can seem like limited resources at school. But there are things we can do to help ourselves and our students increase our capacity for understanding. Here are some tips: Ask Thoughtful Questions & Listen to the Answers Sometimes we need to talk through our feelings in order to understand them. When kids are overwhelmed by their feelings, they may need an adult to scaffold this conversation for them.…
