The teachers of Year 6 of Hampton Junior School contacted me about an exciting project based on my book, ‘How are you feeling today?’ that they were going to set their pupils. Obviously I love to be involved in anything that promotes emotional literacy, so I made an introductory video for the pupils explaining the book and giving tips for how I developed ideas for what could be suggested when a child is feeling any particular emotion.
Pupils were then given the task of choosing an emotion to focus on, developing a succinct sentence to explain the emotion and then giving suggestions of things a younger child could do when they are experiencing that emotion. In other words, they were writing extra pages for my book or creating the sequel!
Some pupils chose to write extra suggestions for emotions already in the book but others chose to write suggestions for further emotions. Here I tried to be of help. Further emotions that might be good for the second book include feeling:
- Frustrated
- Disappointed
- Lonely
- Surprised
- Guilty
- Proud
- Content
- Grateful
- Confused
- Ashamed
- Grumpy
- Pleased
- Motivated
- Uncertain
- Tense
- Determined
The great thing about this activity is that in the process of thinking about emotions and how to help younger children deal with them, the Year 6 children were fine tuning their own ideas about what different emotions feel like and what to do with them. So if any other school wishes me to set this task, drop me a line!