How to deal with emotions
Talking about our emotions, being able to identify our mood, knowing how to put them in words have always been a very difficult skill to acquire.
It is often referred as the emotional intelligence (EQ), defined as the ability to manage emotions and an essential skill needed in our daily lives and at the labor market.
For teachers, it is even more important: not only they have to be able to manage their own emotions, they also have the burden and the honor of managing the emotional development of their students.
We would like to suggest a very interesting activity that you can do with your class. It aims to guide students towards a better awareness and understanding of their emotions, how to react in different situations and how to express their feelings.
How that works…
Hang inside the class a billboard called ‘The vocabulary of emotions” with possible moods divided into:
- Positive states – “I feel good”
- States of actions – “I do not feel well and therefore it is necessary to take actions to make me feel better”.
Make students create a small diary: every page will be divided into two parts as previously stated.
Every week and/or whenever the teacher reckons it is useful, ask the kids to select one to three emotions from their diaries and place them on the billboard.
If there are emotions in the “action” area, ask the students to think about and talk about/write it down how these negative feelings can be turned into positive feelings.
At first, we suggest you to guide the students and do this activity together, but the goal is that the children be able to identify when, where and how actions are needed and how to deal with their own emotions.
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