Emotion Words

AIM:

Students will explore their emotions, reflect on how they feel in different situations and practice noticing their feelings.

OUTCOMES:

• Increased Resilience
• Enhanced self-awareness
• Curiosity about themselves and their personal development.
• Improved capacity for reflection

TIME: 30-60 minutes

PREPARATION: Print and cut out all of the ‘emotion words’ given in this document.

ACTIVITY:

1. Get everyone to sit in a circle and explain that you are going to be thinking about your emotions and ask the class how everyone will show sensitivity and respect in this session.

2. Introduce the Purpose of the activity, stressing that noticing how we feel is an important life skill and something that can be practiced.

4. Layout all the emotion words on the floor, so everyone can see.

5. Ask the group to take a moment to read all the emotion words.

6. Then ask them to pick up 3 words that describe feelings that they have often.

7. Then, take a moment to think about these questions:

8. Why did you choose those particular words?

9. Do these 3 words describe who you are? Why? Why not?

10. Ask them to take a few minutes to share with the person next to them. You may want to remind them to swap who is sharing about halfway through.

11. Bring them back to the circle and ask, “how was that?”, and facilitate a short discussion

12. Next, ask everyone to put the words back on the floor and explain that you are going to look at how emotions may change in different situations.

13. Share different scenarios and invite them to pick up a different word to express how they feel each time. Scenarios might include: your birthday, when you have failed an exam, when you wake up in the morning, when you watch your team win, in an argument with a good friend, when you see someone being bullied at school, etc

DEBRIEF:

• Open up the conversation with the question, “what are you learning from this activity?”

• Debrief questions include: How did it feel to share with someone else? Why?

• Why do you think it is important to have a good connection with our emotions?

• Are there some emotions that describe you as a person, or do they all change in different situations?

• Do you have ALL these emotions inside you?

• Are some emotions connected? If so, how are they connected?

• Explain that hopefully we are becoming more familiar with emotions and how we feel in different situations, and how important this is to understand ourselves

• Close by repeating that we can get better at connecting with how we feel and that it can become a powerful habit, if we practice NOTICING how we feel.