Discussing Emotions
Overview
Teaching students how to label, identify, and manage emotions helps them learn self-regulation skills. By discussing emotions and strategies to manage them, students are better equipped to navigate the emotions they experience to support their learning.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Watch how this primary school teacher incorporates discussions about emotions into his classroom. Through whole-class discussions and individual reflections, students are able to consider, label, and express their emotions so that they can be at their best for learning.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
Watch a demo of how Avokiddo Emotions allows learners to explore emotions through silly animal characters. Exploration and free play help learners develop a deeper understanding of facial expressions and emotional reactions.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Teacher Modeling & Support Strategies
Teachers can support language development by using and providing syntax that is appropriately leveled (e.g.
Teachers support language development by using and providing Vocabulary that is appropriately leveled (e.g., using word wall words).
Content that is provided in clear, short chunks can support students' Working Memory.
Building positive and trusting relationships with learners allows them to feel safe; a sense of belonging; and that their academic, cognitive, and social and emotional needs are supported.
Actively and authentically encouraging all students to seek support, ask questions, and advocate for what they believe in creates a safe space for risk-taking and skill development and supports a Sense of Belonging.
Teachers can help students understand that learning involves effort, mistakes, and reflection by teaching them about their malleable brain and modeling their own learning process.
Providing feedback that focuses on the process of developing skills conveys the importance of effort and motivates students to persist when learning.
By talking through their thinking at each step of a process, teachers can model what learning looks like.
Teachers sharing text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections models this schema building.
Maintaining consistent classroom routines and schedules ensures that students are able to trust and predict what will happen next.
Reading aloud regularly exposes students to new and familiar vocabulary and texts.
Reading aloud books about skills children are learning provides another model for their development.
Providing students a voice in their learning is critical for making learning meaningful.
Wait time, or think time, of three or more seconds after posing a question increases how many students volunteer and the length and accuracy of their responses.
