In a group meeting, students share their feelings while also building their feelings vocabulary and emotion knowledge.

Feelings Circle: An SEL Kernels Practice for Fourth Grade

In a group meeting, students share their feelings while also building their feelings vocabulary and emotion knowledge.

Level: Upper Elementary
Duration: ≤ 15 minutes
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Planning For It

Why Do This?

  • If students talk about feelings, then they can better understand themselves and others. This helps them to regulate and use their emotions to learn and play with others.

 

When You Might Use This Practice

  • Integrated into daily schedules as a routine or used as-needed throughout the day
  • During a designated SEL block of 10-15 minutes per day for Kernels practice or as time allows
  • During a morning meeting, transitions, after recess, or at the end of the day
  • At the beginning of the school year to create a classroom community where it’s safe for students to share their feelings

 

Time Required

  • ≤ 15 minutes

 

Materials

  • N/A

 

Learning Objectives

Students will:

  • Identify their feelings and how they feel in their bodies
  • Build their feelings vocabulary
  • Discuss how they know what someone else is feeling

 

Additional Supports

 

SEL Competencies

  • Self-Awareness
  • Self-Management
  • Social Awareness

How To Do It

Reflection Before the Practice

Take a moment to notice how you feel right now. Are you feeling more than one emotion? Can you identify those emotions? How do they show up in your body? If you’re feeling one or more challenging emotions, take a few deep breaths to relax and let the emotions go.

Note: Click here to download and print a card version of this practice that can be added to the other SEL Kernels practices to make an easy-to-use hand-held collection. See the Brain Games pack for additional activities.

 

The Big Idea

  • Coming together to talk about our feelings helps us learn about emotions and build our feelings vocabulary. Talking about feelings helps us to better understand ourselves and build stronger relationships.

 

Instructions

Choose a time to do this 15-minute routine (suggested: morning meeting, pre-academics, after recess).

  • Gather students to sit or stand in a circle and greet them as they join. You might begin the circle with a mindfulness or visualization activity.
  • Start by saying The Big Idea and then take a few minutes to discuss the following:
    • What are feelings?
    • How do you know how you’re feeling?
    • What does it feel like in your body?
  • After some discussion, ask:
    • How are you feeling today? Ask volunteers to share why.

Must do

  • Go around the circle and give everyone the opportunity to share.
  • Expand feelings vocabulary by introducing more complex feelings words over the year (e.g., trepidation, shame, uncertainty, glee, enamored, elated).

Can adapt

  • Use basic emotion words (e.g., happy, sad, scared, mad) or metaphoric expressions (e.g., weather metaphor: sunny, cloudy, partly cloudy, etc.), or rate your mood on your fingers (5 fingers = excellent mood; 1 finger = terrible mood).

After the activity, debrief

  • What was it like to share your feelings? Are there times you don’t want to share your feelings?
  • Can you tell what another person is feeling? How can you tell?
  • What times at school or home do you need to share how you’re feeling? Why is it important that you do this?
  • What’s the difference between [feeling 1] and [feeling 2] (e.g., sad and worried)? Do they feel the same in your body? What are some other words that describe [feeling 1]? How about [feeling 2]?

Tips for success

  • Allow or encourage responses in home languages.
  • For those who might need extra time, share the prompt ahead of time so they can think about their answer.
  • Allow students to share or pass on their turn depending on their level of comfort.

Over the year

  • Fourth grade is a time to continue exploring the causes and consequences of emotions and link them to problem solving and conflict resolution. A learning objective for the fourth grade year is to understand how feelings influence our thoughts, words and actions, as well as those of others.
  • To start, focus on building familiarity with different feelings words. Create a feelings word wall and add new words to it throughout the year. Refer to it when you’re reading, writing, or solving a problem. This is a way to connect feelings words to other times of the day and build a rich and sophisticated vocabulary. Support students to identify how they are feeling when a conflict arise, such as by giving an “I Message” and using words on the word wall, if needed.
  • Throughout the year, encourage students to use feelings words in classroom situations when conflict, disagreement, or challenges arise. Add into your circle time a discussion about how students can use a rich feelings vocabulary to better understand their own experiences and the experiences, views, perspectives, needs, and wants of others: “Describing how you feel to your peers helps them understand you better and support you when needed.” Take turns giving “I Messages” and saying it back, to encourage empathy and perspective taking. Then take turns coming up with possible “win-win” solutions that work for everyone involved.

 

Source

This practice is part of the SEL Kernels project developed by the EASEL Lab at Harvard University.

Reflection After the Practice

Do you notice students talking about how they feel more frequently? Are they noticing how other students might be feeling, or how characters in a book are feeling?

The Research Behind It

Evidence That It Works

Young children who can accurately read facial expressions and assign an appropriate emotion to a situation perform better academically, have fewer behavior problems, and demonstrate greater prosocial (kind, helpful) behavior.

 

Why Does It Matter?

Knowledge about emotions is key to student success, and learning about emotions early helps students in the long run. Children must use these skills whenever faced with tasks that require emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal regulation. Emotional skills allow children to recognize how different situations make them feel and to address those feelings in prosocial ways.

Consequently, these skills are often fundamental to positive social interactions and critical to building relationships with peers and adults; without the ability to recognize and regulate one’s emotions or engage in empathy and perspective-taking, it becomes very difficult to interact positively with others.

Indeed, first graders who showed little knowledge of emotions were more likely to report feelings of loneliness, sadness, and anxiety in fifth grade. Teens, too, who score high in emotional intelligence have greater academic success, fewer mental health issues, and better attitudes towards teachers and schools.

“When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, less scary.”
–Fred Rogers
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