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? How Do You Feel?

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Lesson Plan

Emotion Spectrum Blueprint

Students will explore the emotion spectrum by identifying and visualizing their feelings, reflect on personal triggers, and select at least one strategy to regulate emotions.

Developing self-awareness and emotion regulation builds empathy, communication, and positive peer relationships, fostering a supportive classroom community.

Audience

4th Grade Class

Time

45 minutes

Approach

Guided discussion, creative art, reflective journaling.

Materials

Prep

Teacher Preparation

10 minutes

Step 1

Warm-Up: Emoji Check-In

5 minutes

  • Display the Emoji Check-In on the board or hand out printed copies.
  • Ask each student to circle the emoji that best represents how they feel right now.
  • Pair students briefly to share their emoji choice and one reason why.
  • Invite a few volunteers to share with the whole class.

Step 2

Introduction: Emotion Spectrum Overview

5 minutes

  • Project the Feelings Unlocked Slides.
  • Introduce the concept of an emotion spectrum, explaining how feelings range from negative to positive.
  • Provide examples (e.g., sad → calm → happy) and invite students to suggest their own.

Step 3

Main Activity: Color-Your-Emotion Canvas

20 minutes

  • Distribute the Color-Your-Emotion Canvas and art supplies.
  • Instruct students to choose a recent emotion they experienced.
  • Ask them to color sections to represent intensity and label areas with situations or triggers.
  • Circulate to prompt deeper thinking: “Why did you choose this color? How strong did you feel?”.

Step 4

Reflection & Journal

10 minutes

  • Provide each student with the Emotion Reflection Journal.
  • Prompt students: What triggered this emotion? How did I react? What strategy could help next time?
  • Encourage honest writing or drawing; offer sentence starters as needed.

Step 5

Cool-Down: Group Share & Close

5 minutes

  • Invite volunteers to share one insight from their journal entries.
  • Reinforce active listening and empathy: peers respond with supportive comments.
  • Summarize key takeaways about noticing emotions and selecting regulation strategies.

Step 6

Differentiation & Assessment

Ongoing

  • Differentiation:
    • Provide graphic organizers or sentence stems for students needing language support.
    • Challenge advanced students to map multiple emotions on their canvas.
  • Assessment:
    • Observe student participation during discussions and activities.
    • Review canvases and journal entries to gauge understanding of emotion identification and regulation strategies.
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Slide Deck

Feelings Unlocked!

Today we’ll discover our emotions, learn how they can be strong or mild, and get ready to share and create.

Welcome students and introduce the day’s objective: we will explore what emotions are, how they range on a spectrum, and prepare for our activities.

What Is an Emotion?

• An emotion is how we feel inside.
• Emotions can be positive, negative, or neutral.
• We all experience emotions every day.

Define “emotion” in kid-friendly terms. Use examples from the morning or recent school events.

The Emotion Spectrum

Negative ← Neutral ← Positive

Example:
• Sad ← Calm ← Happy

Draw a simple horizontal line on the board and label negative, neutral, positive. Explain that emotions can move along this line.

Emotion Examples

Negative: sad, angry, scared
Neutral: calm, bored, surprised
Positive: happy, excited, proud

Ask volunteers for additional examples. Record their suggestions under each category.

Intensity Matters

Same emotion, different strength:
• Content → Happy → Ecstatic
• Annoyed → Angry → Furious

Explain that “happy” can be soft (content) or strong (ecstatic). Invite kids to share examples of mild vs. intense feelings.

Emoji Check-In Preview

For our warm-up, we’ll use the Emoji Check-In.

Choose the face that shows how you feel right now.

Introduce the warm-up. Show how to use the Emoji Check-In sheet to identify current feelings.

Scenario Time

Imagine your teacher says, “You have 10 extra minutes to play!”
How do you feel?
• Excited? • Calm? • Surprised? • Other?

Pose the scenario, then ask several students to raise hands and share which emotion they’d choose.

What Triggers Emotions?

Think about a time you felt very (emotion).
What caused it?
• A person’s words
• Something you saw or heard
• A special event

Prompt students to think quietly or jot ideas. Then invite sharing in pairs or small groups.

Activity Overview

Next we’ll use the Color-Your-Emotion Canvas to:
• Draw your feeling
• Show its intensity with color
• Label what triggered it

Explain that they will capture these thoughts with color and words on the canvas next.

Let’s Get Started!

Please take out:
• Your Emoji Check-In sheet
• Color-Your-Emotion Canvas
• Crayons, markers, or colored pencils

Tell students to get out materials and transition to the Emoji Check-In sheets.

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Warm Up

Emoji Check-In

Circle the emoji that shows how you feel right now:

🙂 😐 🙁 😢 😡 😃 😴 😕

Write one word to describe your feeling:



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Activity

Color-Your-Emotion Canvas

Name: ____________________ Date: _______________

1. Emotion Name:



2. Intensity Scale: Circle the number that shows how strong your feeling was (1 = mild, 5 = very strong):

1 2 3 4 5




3. Color & Label Your Feeling:

  • Use colors to show how you felt (lighter colors for mild, darker for intense).
  • Draw in the space below and label sections with words or short phrases that explain what part of your feeling each color represents.













4. What Triggered This Emotion?
Write or draw the situation, person, or thought that caused you to feel this way:






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Cool Down

Emotion Reflection Journal

Name: ____________________ Date: _______________

  1. What triggered this emotion?




  2. How did I react to this feeling?




  3. One thing I did well to manage my emotion:




  4. One strategy I can try next time I feel this way:




  5. How can a friend or adult help me when I experience this emotion?




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? How Do You Feel? • Lenny Learning