Lower School Classroom Chronicle

As first graders navigate their growing friendships and independence as learners, it is important for them to learn and practice using specific language that describes and expresses their feelings. Our goal is to move students away from vaguely saying “It didn’t feel good” or “I feel bad” to specifically stating “I felt frustrated and left out” or “I feel relieved and proud!”

Our first Social Studies unit of the year has a focus on naming feelings and expressing emotions. Students quickly learn that feelings are not always simple to identify after playing Charades in small groups. They discover that emotions can convey layers of feelings all at once. We explored this concept by reading, “Dragons on the Inside (And Other Big Feelings)” by Valerie Coulman and Alexandra Colombo. After, students created visual representations of their outside emotions and inside feelings through the use of specific colors and patterns associated with feeling words. We learned that because our inside feelings do not always match our outside emotional state, it is helpful and empathetic to check in with each other. Students were led through a Check-In activity that rated favorite sweet treats from 1-5, where a 5 check-in meant you felt like a Fantastic Chocolate and a 2 felt like a Grumpy Lollipop. This scale became a concrete tool to articulate how they were feeling in that moment. After looking through examples of other Check-In scales, first graders imagined and created their own scales to use in their classrooms.