The PDC Curriculum
Emotional Intelligence
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional Intelligence:
“The capacity for recognising our own feelings
and those of others, for motivating ourselves,
for managing emotions well in ourselves and in
our relationships.” Daniel Goleman
Five ingredients to Emotional Intelligence
• Self-awareness- knowing one’s emotions and
recognising feelings as they happen.
• Emotional management- handling feelings, the ability
to recover quickly from upsets and distress.
• Self-motivation- the ability to control one’s emotions,
to self-discipline, delay gratification and stifle
impulsiveness in pursuit of one’s goals.
• Empathy- the ability to listen and understand what
other people are communicating verbally and nonverbally and to sense what others are feeling.
• Managing emotions in others- the ability to connect
inter-personally to others with ease and understanding.
Framework of key Social and Emotional
learning competencies.
Self-Awareness
•Identifying and recognising
emotions
•Accurate self-perception
•Recognising strengths, needs and
values
Social Awareness
•Empathy
•Appreciating diversity
•Respect for Others
•Responsible Decision Making
•Problem Identification and Solving
•Evaluation and reflection
•Personal, moral, and ethical
responsibility
Self-Management
• Impulse control and stress management
• Self-motivation and discipline
• Goal setting and organizational skills
Relationship Management
•Communication, social engagement and building relationships
•Working cooperatively
•Negotiation, refusal and conflict management
•Help seeking and providing
Self-awareness
• Identifying and Recognising Emotions:
‘Emotional
self-awareness (recognizing feelings and building a
vocabulary for them) is an essential foundation for emotional
literacy. Children with a sufficient feelings vocabulary can
communicate with others about their emotions and express their
needs. Children who accurately identify and label emotions tend to
be less aggressive, are more accepted by peers, and are
generally more socially competent.’
All children need support in building a feelings
vocabulary.
Children learn to develop an awareness of feelings when adults
serve as role models by expressing their own feelings in words and
teaching a feelings vocabulary to children in class meetings, during
conversation and play with children, and through games and
activities. Through repeated examples, children learn to identify their
own emotions and the feelings of others. They learn that their
emotions are normal and an accurate reflection of their experience.
They learn that feelings can change and that people may have
different feelings about the same thing.
Helping Children Identify and Label Emotions
Provide an environment in which children feel safe to share their
feelings. Remember that you might be offering the only emotionally
safe haven for children experiencing abuse, neglect, violence, or
other trauma in their lives. Expect that it will take some time for
children to trust and feel safe to communicate openly with you.
The Four main ideas to teach children:
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Feelings are important signals
They can arise from inside the body or they can come from
outside, as a signal from someone else, and they provide very
important information. This information could be about
ourselves-something that we need or desire-or it could be about
the needs of others. It is very important that we help children
understand that their feelings are different from their behaviour.
E.g.: Place a sign in your room that says: ‘All feelings are ok.
Behaviours can be ok or not ok.’
Separate feelings from behaviours
Often when children have certain emotions, let’s say anger, and
if they’ve been punished for something, they fuse together the
emotions they felt and the behaviour that they were punished for.
They also believe that even feeling certain emotions is already
being bad. It’s very important to help children see that feelings
are just a part of us.
They arise and we need to look at them. There’s nothing wrong
with feelings-they are natural.
3.You can’t think until you are calm
This is a sort of mantra. It relates to the fact that emotions
condition the mind to see in a certain way. Children need to
know that they have to calm down first so that they can see
clearly what’s happening, and then see what to do about it.
4. The Golden rule
‘Treat others the way you want to be treated’. The idea here is
to invoke taking the perspective of others.
The following lists of objectives may be used when instructing a social
awareness intervention and measuring progress of the individuals
participating:
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School Behaviours
Looks at an adult when called
Looks at another child when called
Can maintain eye contact when talking
Does not interrupt the speaker
Waits for a turn to talk
Understands what is being said
Follows instructions appropriately
Uses appropriate volume when speaking
Uses the appropriate vocabulary to express needs, wants and ideas
Can sit appropriately to listen to a story/teacher’s instructions
Can concentrate on an activity without interrupting others
Knows what is ‘safe’ to do in class
Knows what is ‘unsafe’ to do in class
Knows how to play and interact safely in the playground
Knows when behaviour is unsafe in the playground
Follows classroom routines and rules to keep safe
Follows playground routines and rules to keep safe
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Feelings
Can recognise and label how they are feeling
Can recognise how others are feeling
Can show empathy towards others
Can tell an adult when they feel distressed
Can tell another peer when they feel distressed
Can distinguish between comfortable and uncomfortable feelings
Has appropriate emotional vocabulary to express feelings accurately
Can express anger without physical aggression
Friendship Skills
Shows interest in other pupils
Can approach a peer and ask to play with them
Understands the concept of kindness
Understands the concept of sharing
Understands the concept of turn-taking
Can identify one or more friends in class
Can identify one or more friends in the home
Will apologise to a friend when necessary
Will help out a friend when necessary
Has shown the ability to sustain a friendship
Social Skills
• Can take turns appropriately in conversation.
• Can take turns appropriately in a game.
• Plays well with other pupils in a game/turn-taking activity
• Can work well alongside one other pupil on a class base learning task
• Can participate well in a group activity i.e. helping, turn-taking, supporting
others in need
• Co-operates with peers and plays effectively in the playground
Example of activities around recognising feelings
1. Have students brainstorm as many different feelings as they can
and list them on the board. Group similar feelings (i.e. angry, mad,
furious, etc.) together. Discuss why feelings are neutral and why
only the way we handle them can be labelled as good or bad.
2. Draw a three columned table on the board. Label the tops of the
columns with the following terms: Situation, Physical Cues, and
Body Language. Taking each feeling or group of feelings one at a
time, have students work their way through the chart. The
examples described below use “anger” for the purpose of
demonstration:
• Examples of situations that might result in angry feelings. Children
can use situations they have experienced or imagine situations
that might apply.
• The physical cues that often accompany angry feelings (for
example, racing heart, sweaty palms, loud voice, etc.) Point out to
children that when they start to notice themselves experiencing
these physical cues, that this is their body’s way of telling them
that they are experiencing intense feelings. The goal is for children
to recognize these signs early on before the anger gets out of
control.
• Body language cues that often accompany angry feelings
(clenched fists, angry face, folded arms, etc.) Point out to children
that when they see these “clues” in another person, that person
may be angry. This helps children to start to identify angry feelings
in others, whether the feelings are verbalized or not.