Lesson Outcomes
National Curriculum
Resources: Magnifying glasses, emotion fans, pens, pencils, paperclips
Handout 1: The handout provides a feelings scale template. This needs to be either printed onto card or laminated.
Handout 2: The handout provides two scripts for the teacher, giving an account of a character's frustrating day at school.
Handout 3: The handout provides space for the children to draw their special person and includes the phrase, ‘Can you help me with this big feeling?’
Starter
Using the emotion fans once again, start the lesson with a feelings check-in. This time, develop the sentence further: ‘I am feeling… I know because…’ and encourage the children to think about where the emotion is in their body. For example, ‘I am feeling relaxed. I know because my breathing is slow and gentle.’ All adults in the classroom should join in with this.
Use the presentation slides to show an image of four people at a football match. Ask the children to be Emotion Detectives again using their magnifying glasses to look for clues about how these people are feeling. Discuss with the children their ideas and how they know. Explain that although the characters are all in the same scenario, they are all experiencing different emotions.
Main Teaching
Explain to the children that feelings are experienced on a scale and can change depending on the situation; explain how a feeling can be bigger or smaller. In the video, the children will be shown a colour scale from ‘big’ to ‘small’ as a visual representation. They will hear an explanation of how to use the scale to show that feelings may change. Children should be given their own copy of the scale here, using the template provided, laminated with a paperclip.
Task: The teacher should read the statements on the slides provided one by one. Ask the children to move the paperclip on their scale to show their partner, eg. ‘How happy they would be if…?' The statements work through different emotions.
Main Teaching
After the game is complete, the teacher should read through the first script on Handout 2, which gives an account of a character’s frustrating day at school. At the indicated points, the children and the teacher should move their paperclip to demonstrate the scale of the emotion. The script ends with the character’s emotions being at the top end of the scale. Ask the children to stand and to mime how the character feels.
Read the second script aloud and ask the children to move their paperclips accordingly. This time, people step in and support the character. Teachers could ask the children to make a sound effect every time the character has a feeling. Discuss with the children what happened to the character’s emotion scale when they shared their feelings.
Task: Ask the children to draw the person/people they can speak to about their feelings. They might like to draw someone for when they are at school, and someone for when they are at home.
Plenary
Reinforce with the children that when feelings are smaller, it is important to name them, recognise them and use their scale to decide how big it is. If the feeling starts to grow big, they should find their special person and say ‘Can you help me with this big feeling?’ Practise saying the sentence out loud with the children.
Teacher Mastery
When delivering the feelings check-in, teachers should aim to model their own response with honesty and encourage all adults in the room to join in, as this helps normalise emotional expression for children. Throughout the lesson, the emotion fans should be used alongside the feeling scale to reinforce the idea that feelings exist on a scale and can grow or shrink depending on the situation. When children are creating their personal feeling scales, give them time to make it their own, as ownership makes the tool more meaningful and more likely to be used independently going forward.
Teachers should be mindful that some children may find it difficult to identify a trusted adult at home or at school, so approach the drawing task with sensitivity, and quietly follow up with any child who appears uncertain. The tasks in this lesson can be used again as an intervention with children who need to discuss and process other feelings that they bring up for them.
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