Feelings Circle: An SEL Kernels Practice for Second Grade

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 song the class likes to sing together.
• 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 do feelings 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 (e.g., excited, anxious, curious, embarrassed, shy, confused, thrilled).

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?
• Do animals have feelings? How do you know?
• What times at school or home do you need to share how you’re feeling?
• 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

• Second grade is a time to expand feelings vocabulary and connect emotions to reading and writing. A learning objective for the year is to increase students’ emotions vocabulary, and to encourage students to use rich emotion words in their academic writing and discussion.
• 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 and during writing activities. This works best when you use it often and allow students to talk about differences between words (e.g., what’s the difference between scared and anxious?) and to explore characters’ feelings in books and articles (e.g., what word describes how you think X is feeling?
• Throughout the year, encourage students to think about and describe why they feel the way they feel (i.e., what happened to make you feel that way?). This helps students understand the causes and consequences of feelings.
• When students are ready for more, explore how we respond to feelings. Add a discussion about how we can respond to others’ emotions.Have the group brainstorm different ways to respond when others share their feelings (e.g., offer a hug, offer a listening ear, offer to play together, etc.).

Source

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

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.