Importance of Identifying Emotions in Our Learners

A visual to help students identify emotions and reflect on how they feel.

There is no question that emotions play a huge role in what it means to be human. Students and teachers both go through such a wide array of emotions on a daily basis. As educators we can often see and understand the impact that emotions play in the day to day interactions within a classroom. Student reflection has always played a critical role in my PE program. We have a great guidance counsellor working in our elementary school here at NIS. Gail Griffis recently posted an emotions poster outside her office and while I was strolling past one day I noticed it. I thought that it would be a perfect fit in PE, so I spoke with her about using this poster in PE. 

It seems as though the posters were created by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, so I must credit them for their work (Center for Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning). All I did was to cut and paste these images into a poster that I am going to use in PE with the driving questions being, "How are you feeling in PE today? Can you identify which emotion below? I am putting the poster up for the first time today to begin to test it out. I am sincerely hoping it will work well to initiate important discussion in my classes and to help in getting students thinking more when writing their reflections. I'm always willing to try out new things if it is going to enhance the learning experiences for my students. I'll let you know how it goes!