Reading emotions in others

Students learn to identify the clues to recognising emotions in other people.

1. Conduct a shared reading of a picture book that shows the characters expressing feelings, such as I Have Feelings! or Things That Make You Feel Good, Things That Make You Feel Bad. Ask the students:
   • What might (insert character name) be feeling here?
   • How can you tell?
   • What body signals do you feel inside when you feel this feeling?
   • What signals do we see in others to let us know they are feeling this feeling? (focus on tone of voice, words used, facial expressions, body language)  
2. Explain that you can learn to understand other people’s feelings by looking at body clues: looking at their faces, looking at the way they stand (body posture) and listening to what other people say and the way their voice sounds (tone of voice). Whiteboard this information under the headings of 'looking' and 'listening'.
3. Tell students that we can often guess how others feel but then we should always check by asking. Sometimes we misunderstand how people are feeling and then might respond in a way that is not helpful.
4. Conduct a think-pair-share to discuss how they could recognise when:
   • A friend is sad
   • A friend is excited
   • A brother or sister is worried
   • A parent is disappointed
   • A classmate is shy
   • A parent is angry.

Students have the opportunity to practise recognising emotions.

1. Have students form small circle talk circles. Give each student standing in the inside circle, a feeling card from Teaching Resource: Feelings cards.
2. Explain that these students must role-play a situation that might give them the feeling shown on the card. For example, if their feelings card is 'happy' then they might mime opening a present and looking happy about what is inside.
3. The students standing in the outside circle must try to guess the feeling, explaining what body clues they saw and what word clues they heard that led them to guess this feeling.
4. Students standing in the inside circle students pass their feelings card to their partner and the outside circle then moves on one person to the right.
5. Repeat the process several times so students are exposed to a range of feelings and have several opportunities to both guess and perform a feeling.