Lesson 5: Emotions
Essential Question: How can I identify emotions?
Lesson Overview
1. Brain Warmup
2. Read Aloud
3. Modeling Activity
4. Group Activity
6. Brain Cooldown
Purpose:
- By learning about emotions, students can transfer the skill of identifying the emotions into real life situations. Students will be able to identify the emotions of others by looking for clues and predicting how they feel.
Vocabulary:
- common emotions (happy, sad, mad, worried, etc.)
- body language
Additional Book
Visiting Feelings by Lauren Rubenstein
- This book describes feelings and emotions using the five senses. The author explains emotions in a comforting way through words and pictures for students.
Click on book for video of read aloud
Brain Warmup: What's the Emotion?
Purpose: This activity allows students to practice showing the emotion being shown and described.
Materials: Emoji Emotion Cards courtesy of Teachers Pay Teachers
Time: 5 minutes
Procedure:
-
Students will sit on the carpet or open floor space facing the teacher.
-
The teacher will use the Emoji Emotion Cards. Each card has an Emoji face showing an emotion.
-
The teacher will show the students one card and say the emotion. The students will use their face to create the emotion being described.
-
This process will continue until all Emoji Emotion Cards have been shown.
Read Aloud: There Might be Lobster by Carolyn Crimi
Before reading the story, ask students “can only humans or people have emotions?” Allow the students time to brainstorm and select two to three volunteers to share their answer. However, answer the question after reading the story.
This read aloud emphasizes that humans and animals can have and display feelings. The story follows a dog named Suki, and Suki fears the ocean. Following the story, answer the question “can only humans or people have emotions?”. To assist in the read aloud discussion, use the following discussion questions.
-
Can only humans or people have emotions?
-
How did you know Suki was afraid of the ocean?
-
Do you feel afraid sometimes? (you can ask students to share or just ask students to raise their hand if they sometimes feel scared)
-
Do you think we can predict how others might be feeling?
Additional Lesson
Activities
Inside Out Guess the Emotion:
- This video includes the characters from the Disney movie Inside Out. The main character, Riley, demonstrates behaviors allowing students to guess how Riley is feeling.
- The video includes natural pauses for the students to guess the emotion.
- See resources for link to video
Additional Resources
Inside Out Guess the Emotion Video:
- Link to video
Teaching Social Skills through Picture Books:
- This article includes a description of 50 picture books that can be used to teach various emotions.
- The article categorizes the picture books based on the emotions taught in the story.
Modeling Activity: I Predict _________
Purpose: This modeling activity provides students with an example of how to predict how someone may be feeling. The prediction activity allows for students to understand the use of body language will help identify emotions.
Materials: pictures of emotions
Time: 5 to 10 minutes
Procedure:
-
Use the Pictures of Emotions to model how to predict the emotion someone may be feeling.
-
Show the first picture to the students and model how to identify the students feeling.
-
Describe what you see.
-
Picture is of a little boy. He has his hands on his eyes. He is rubbing is eyes. The boy is not smiling because he has a frown on his face.
-
-
Say a prediction statement.
-
I predict the little boy is sad because he has is hands over his eyes and a frown on his face.
-
-
After modeling explain that it is important to look at the student or persons body. Define the term body language. Explain “when I was looking at the boy, I noticed is where his hands where on his face and I looked at the boy’s mouth”.
-
Continue this process of describing what is in the picture and the prediction statement for the rest of the slides. For the rest of the slides, describe and predict as a class or ask for volunteers to share their descriptions and predictions.
Group Activity: Emotion Basketball
Purpose: This activity allows students to practice making predictions about how someone might be feeling based on clues in a short story.
Materials: 4 buckets, happy label, sad label, angry label, surprised label, small ball
Time: 10 to 15 minutes
Procedure:
-
Create a throwing using masking tape on the floor or carpet. Place the four buckets in throwing distance away from the throwing line. Each bucket will have an emotion label taped to the front of the bucket.
-
Example: There will be a happy bucket, sad bucket, angry bucket, and surprised bucket.
-
-
Students will form a line behind the throwing line.
-
The teacher will read a short story to the first person in the line. The first person will listen for clues to figure how what emotion is being described.
-
The student will say what emotion is being described and throw the small ball in the bucket the corresponds with his or her answer.
-
Once the student throws the ball, he or she will get the ball from the bucket and pass the ball to the next person in line.
-
This process will continue so that students have a chance to guess the emotion and throw the ball.
Note: Sample emotion stories can be found under Lesson 5 resources. More challenging emotion stories can be created, and various throwing lines can be created to add difficulty to the activity.
Brain Cooldown: Draw the Emotion
Purpose: Students will use their knowledge gather about what emotion looks like to draw the emotion on a clipart face.
Materials: ‘Draw the Emotion’ Graphic Organizer
Time: 5 minutes
Procedure:
-
This can be completed independently or has a whole class.
-
Pass out the ‘Draw the Emotion’ Graphic Organizer to each student. The students can use a pencil or crayons to draw the faces.
-
Students will read the emotion under the face and draw what he or she might look like if he or she felt happy, sad, angry, excited, silly, or surprised.
-
The teacher can also read the emotions and provide prompting questions or examples if students are having difficulties drawing the emotion.
-
Note: Model the first emotion so the students understand what is being asked of them. The first emotion could be completed together as well.
