Teaching Feelings

The class I took last night was awesome! I feel much more prepared to take the strategies I learned and use them in my classroom next year. It is fascinating to me how many behaviors we can lessen or eliminate simply by teaching children to identify their feelings.

One of the articles we read, written by Gail E. Joseph and Philip S. Strain from the University of Colorado, talked about the importance of teaching children to identify emotions not only in themselves but also in their classmates. A big part of doing this is having the vocabulary to name the feelings. In the article, they mentioned, "Partly because of an absence of feeling words they often interpret the behavior of others as intentionally hurtful and eventually act out in ways that invariably lead to social isolation and stigmatization." Simply introducing children to a wide variety of feelings vocabulary and giving them examples of what those feelings look like will help children deal with many difficult social situations. It's amazing to me that I thought this was all something kids just learn from experience... Next year, I will be a better teacher.

There are many ways to teach this vocabulary. Some of my favorites are:

• Read alouds - check out the widget below for some of the books we were given last night (for free!) that are all excellent for teaching vocabulary
• Games - anything from feelings dice to spinners to pass-the-hat type games in which children have to act out the emotion are perfect
• Identifying emotions as they naturally happen in the classroom
• Involving families

Check this website out for even more ideas. It's a phenomenal source. There are lesson plans, called Book Nooks, that go with certain books to help teach feelings vocabulary. Amazing!

We had a lot of time last night to discuss problems we have had with children in the past, and it was helpful to hear the advice my classmates had to offer. One classmate talked about a little guy she has who breaks down for, what appears to be, no reason all the time; he is just an emotional mess. We talked about how important it is going to be to teach this little guy to identify his feelings to help enable him to talk about them. He comes from a tough home life, and I am sure he is just aching for someone to love him. Hopefully, my classmate will be able to give him the interventions (especially love) he needs before he heads off to kindergarten in the fall.