Promoting Social
Emotional Competence
Promoting Children’s
Success: Enhancing
Emotional Literacy
Adapted for Kindergarten-Grade 1 from the Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning
by Genetta Gross, Margret Thorstenson, Melissa Binkley & Elizabeth Vorhaus
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Emotional Literacy
What is emotional literacy?
Emotional literacy is the ability to identify,
understand, and express emotions in a healthy way.
Children with a Strong Foundation
in Emotional Literacy:
• tolerate frustration better
• get into fewer fights
• engage in less destructive
behavior
• are healthier
• are less lonely
• are less impulsive
• are more focused
• have greater academic
achievement
Emotional Literacy Skills
• Labeling feelings in self and others
• Understanding gradations of feelings
• Recognizing facial and physiological signs
• Modulating response
• Understanding that feelings can change
• Developing coping strategies
• Demonstrating empathy
Activity
“Table Talk”
With your table mates…
Write a list of
feeling words that you
would most want to
teach the K-1 children
you work with.
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Direct Teaching
of Feeling Vocabulary
Classroom Example
Indirect Teaching
Provide emotional
labels as children
experience various
affective states “Tamika and Tanya
seem really happy to
be playing together!
They keep hugging
each other!”
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Emotion Bingo
Checking In
• Teachers and children
can “check in” each
morning by choosing a
feeling face that best
describes their affective
state and putting it next
to their name. Children
can be encouraged to
change their feeling
faces throughout the
day as their feelings
change.
How do you feel today?
Feeling Dice/Feeling Wheel
Book Nooks
http://www.csefel.uiuc.edu/practical-ideas.html
On Monday
When
it Rained
Glad Monster
Sad Monster
Hands Are Not
for Hitting
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Discussion: There’s No Time!
“I don’t have time to teach
all of these things. I’m
already busy teaching
literacy, science, health,
math and completing
IGDIs, protfolios, and other
assessments!”
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Activity: Action Planning
• Consider the following ideas when developing
this month’s action plan:
• Explain how you will introduce these emotions
•
•
•
•
during large group time.
How will you teach children to recognize these
emotions in themselves? In others?
What books will you use to help teach about these
emotions?
How will you help children explore these emotions in
center time?
Design an art activity around these emotions.
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Questions?