- Teach emotional awareness by encouraging students to recognise and name their emotions. Simple activities like emotion check-ins or feeling charts can help them understand how they feel and why.
- Establish a classroom where students feel safe to express their emotions without judgment. Encourage open conversations about feelings and reinforce the importance of kindness and respect.
- Use positive reinforcement and clear boundaries to manage emotions and behaviours before they escalate. Rewarding good behaviour helps create a more emotionally balanced environment.
3 of Diamonds
How do you feel?
Easy Level
We all have many emotions that visit throughout the day, some we welcome, some we wait to pass.
Checking in with how you feel is super important! It’s like taking a quick pause to see what’s happening inside.
- Pause for a moment – Stop what you’re doing and take a deep breath.
- Ask yourself – “How am I feeling right now?” Happy, sad, excited, worried?
- Why do I feel this way? – Did something happen? Is something on your mind?
- What can I do next? – If you feel good, keep going! If not, maybe you need a break, a snack, or to talk to someone.
You could also try writing or drawing your feelings in a diary or on a piece of paper, and you can even throw it away after!
It’s important to keep checking in with yourself to see how you’re feeling. Emotions can be tricky and sometimes confusing. They can make you feel happy and calm, or sometimes uncomfortable, upset, or even frustrated.
Doing daily check-ins helps you get to know yourself better. You can start to notice what things make you smile or what things bother you. When you understand your feelings, it’s easier to know how to handle them. Maybe you’ll find out that going for a walk helps you feel calm, or that talking to a friend makes you feel better when you’re sad. By checking in with your emotions, you can take better care of yourself and make choices that keep you feeling happy and healthy!
A study found that writing in a diary has multiple benefits, one in two of those who write in a diary say it helps them relax, and one in three say they write because it makes them feel better when they are sad. Writing in a diary is a safe space which can help to better understand yourself and your feelings, and to deal with worries and bad thoughts.1
- Children learn by watching you, so show them how to handle emotions calmly and positively. Your reactions set the tone for how they respond to challenges.
- Encourage them to recognise their emotions and what caused them to feel this way. This can help overcome problems.
- Use a journal / diary to keep track of mood changes and their causes
- Clark, C. and Riad, L. (2022). Children and young people’s diary writing in 2022. [online] National Literacy Trust.
Available at: https://cdn.literacytrust.org.uk/media/documents/Diary_writing_in_2022.pdf [Accessed 23 Aug. 2024].