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Component : Self Awareness
Component Description: observing yourself and recognizing your feelings; building a vocabulary for feelings; knowing the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and reactions.

GRADES K-3
Specific Session Objective
 Students will recognize and name emotions they have felt and recognize the difference between feelings and actions.

Terms
 thought   feeling/emotion  action

Session Materials
 list of emotional scenarios
 short prepared story with varying emotional levels
 Polaroid camera with film (optional)
 masking tape
 chalkboard and chalk

Session Content
1.     Make list on the chalkboard of emotions: sad, happy, worried, nervous, etc.  Ask students to define emotions on the list.  Focus on nuances between definitions of similar emotions.  As definitions are given, ask the student supplying the definition for a scenario that might cause a person to have this emotion.  Ask the students for a scenario that might cause a person to have this emotion.  Ask the students if any of them have ever felt an emotion that is not yet on the board, i.e. worried, lonely, nervous.  Ask for incidents that caused these emotions.  Using their faces only at first, ask the students show what emotions might look like as you call them out.  Then allow them to engage the rest of their bodies, asking them to freeze in each emotion.  Spotlight exceptional physical representations of emotions.  If possible, take a picture of three or four students showing each emotion, and continue the exercise until each student has had their picture taken.
2.     Use the following story as a starter (or a similar one of your own) emphasizing its different emotional levels.  Students will imagine they are you (the leader) as you tell the story in first person. They are to use their bodies to pantomime the action of the narrator and the emotion the narrator is feeling while moving freely about the space:
 One day when I was feeling very happy, my class went on a trip to the circus.  As I climbed aboard the school bus, I was very excited about seeing the circus, and a little nervous about being away from school.  The bus ride was very long, and as I rode I gazed out of the window and watched birds flying by.  This made me feel very peaceful.  When we arrived at the circus, I climbed out of the bus and stepped right in front of a huge elephant!*
     *As you bring the story to its climax, halt the action by freezing the students.  Discuss how the students are feeling at this very moment (as their character in the story).  Then ask them why they are feeling this way.  Do they like feeling this way and why?  What  could they do to change the way they are feeling?  (Take a deep breath, be still and quiet, back away from the elephant, etc.)  Continue the pantomime, allowing the student their choice of action.  How did it work to change the way they were feeling?  Bring the story to a close.
3.     Establish definitions for thoughts (what we think), actions (what we do), and emotions (how we feel).  Explain the relationship between thinking, doing and feeling.  With the students still seated in a circle on the floor, present them with these lines of dialogue (they may also be written on the chalk board):
     A.  Good morning.
     B.  Hello.
     A.  Is this my toy?
     B.  I think so.
     A.  Thank you.
     B.  See you later.
   Have the students say the series of lines out loud together several times, as a group, boys only, girls only, etc., until the sound of it is very familiar to them.  Show the students two lines of masking tape that you have laid down to represent two adjacent doors.  Divide the class into two groups, “A” and “B” and ask each group to take their place behind one of the “doors”.  Place a toy between the doors, equidistant from each one.  Instruct the students that an “A” person and a “B” person will come out of the doors at the same time.  Before each enters the scene, the leader will read them a scenario or what has just happened to them and they will decide how they are feeling and share it with the class.  (For example: “This morning, the President called you to tell you that you've won the Greatest Kid in the World Award” or “You watched a scary movie last night in which the monster snuck up on people by waiting for them outside their front doors”).  Using the lines of dialogue, they will play the scene using the emotions they have derived from the scenario.  The leader can use note cards prepared ahead of time with scenarios written on them.

Session Assessment
1.     Erase the emotions from the board and ask the students to name the emotions they played with feeling today.  Review any differences between similar emotions that may come up.
2.      With regard to the final activity, ask the students to talk about the emotions that they played.  Ask for volunteers to recall and relate the scenario that make them feel that way.  How did the way they were feeling effect what they did in the scene?
3.      When someone is feeling a negative emotion, what might they do to change the way they are feeling?  What would happen if they didn't do anything about it?

   Developed by Carol Lanoux
 

GRADES 4-6
Specific Session Objective
    Using role-play, students will demonstrate and practice de-toxing a toxic emotion.
Terms
    Toxic emotions - encourage thesaurus use for anger, jealousy, greed, etc.
Session Materials
    8 1/2" X 11" paper, markers, thesaurus
    space to make a standing circle with students
Session Content
1.    Brainstorm toxic emotions discussed in the text and/or ones you have experienced.
2.    Write one emotion per sheet of paper with no repeats.  Stretch your vocabulary.
3.    Place papers in the middle of the circle.
4.    The class demonstrates one or two of the toxic emotions facially to experience the feeling.
       Practice vocalizing the feeling saying, "Have a nice day." (or another phrase)
Optional - dependent upon student skill level
 *Ask students to recall three favorite lines from plays or movies they've seen.
5.    One person begins by holding the sign above the head and saying a phrase (or the line)
       demonstrating that toxic emotion.
6.    Hand the paper to another student in the circle who then must demonstrate the same emotion
        saying his/her prepared line.
7.    This student may hand the paper to another person or choose another paper and repeat steps
        5 and 6.
8.    The game ends when all have taken a turn, all papers are used or time is up.

Follow-up:
    Discuss how the toxic emotions felt.  Were they genuine or performed?  How do toxic emotions feel in everyday life?  How could we change the exercise to make it more realistic?

De-toxing Emotions
    Discuss how we de-tox our own (and others) toxic emotions.
    Play the game as before, but with these changes:
1.    A person starts by stating a sentence that is expressed in a toxic manner.
2.    Another student responds using a response that will lessen the toxic emotion.  (Empathy is a
        good place to begin.  If you have discussed active listening, this works as well).
3.    After hearing a couple of examples, create an improvised scene showing a fuller dialogue than
        the statements made.  If a particularly good example is provided, break into pairs and have
        each pair work with those statements to create a short scene.  Perform for all; discuss the
        pitfalls and successes trying to help de-tox emotions.
Session Assessment
    Journal writing is beneficial.  Write about the emotions experienced in the activity and in real life.
    Refer to Goleman's Emotional Intelligence Chapter 11
                                                                                            Created by Cari Rodden
 

GRADES 6-8
Specific Session Objective
    Students will use paper dolls of themselves to show how feelings are layered.
Terms
    movement, feelings, perception
Session Materials
    Pre-made tape of music, cassette player, paper dolls (3 per student), markers
Session Content
Warm-up
     Use three dramatically different excerpts from musical scores which explode with feeling.  Have the students move to the music, expressing feelings through body movements. (Suggestion: use instrumental music only.  Words may dictate feelings.)
Discuss the exercise naming the emotions felt during each piece of music.
Layering Feelings
1.  Introduce this section by discussing that there are three layers of feelings that we will focus on today: how we perceive ourselves, how we think others perceive us, and how others really perceive us. Discuss how what we perceive can also become how we feel.
2.  On the first paper doll, write how you feel about yourself.  (Adjective emphasis)
3.  On the second doll, write what you feel others think about you.
4.  One the third doll, write only your name.
5.   Everyone passes their dolls around the room until each student has written on each doll.
6.  Layer the dolls so that a relationship can be made between what is hidden and what is perceived outwardly.
7.  Discuss what you believe is genuine.  How do your feelings about yourself differ or match those of others?  Do we share our true emotions with others?
Other techniques
1.  Use butcher paper so that students can trace around each other.  (Mimic the movements from the warm-up creating actions and poses.)  Put the hidden feelings on the back and the outer emotions on the front.
2.  Use lunch bags.  Students write how they feel about themselves on slips stapling them in the bag.  Other students write on the outside of the bag.

This exercise is not at all rewarding if students are cruel to each other.  Only use this activity if your class has a respectful attitude toward one another.  Adjust elements making this an emotionally safe exercise for your students.
Session Assessment
Write a creative paragraph from the inner self talking to the outer self.  What do they have in common?
Alternative: journal about the insight gained from the layered emotions.
Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence, Chapter 3
                                                                         Created by C. Rodden

GRADES 9-12
Specific session objective 
 Students will label their emotions and work to control them.
Terms
     Self-Awareness      Objective      Independent Activity
Session Materials
    Appropriate properties
    One copy of Sanford Meisner on Acting, by Sanford Meisner and Dennis Longwell
        (Vintage Books, 1987)
Session Content
1.  Instructor will be familiar with the objective and the independent activity exercise designed by Meisner and will have predesigned enough two person scenarios for each person in the class.  In these scenarios, each students is assigned an “independent activity” ( a demanding physical task that must be completed by a deadline), an “objective” (something they want or need from their scene partner) and, possibly, a “secret”, which will serve to heighten dramatic possibilities.  In an example scenario, partners A and B are roommates at a performing arts high school.  A’s independent activity is to be memorizing a monologue for tomorrow’s audition.  A’s objective is to convince B to drive A to the store to purchase a new outfit for tomorrow’s audition.  When B enters the room, B’s independent activity is to be packing a backpack for school.  B’s audition is today.  B’s objective is to convince A to lend B the book of audition monologues.  With practice and knowledge of the students, the instructor can design many such scenarios which will work well with their students.
2.  Instructor will break students up into pairs, assigning them each a scenario.  It is important that properties be physically present.  Nothing should be mimed.  Students will interact in the improv, which, as designed by the instructor, should produce conflict.  Instructor will freeze the improv when it appears to have reached an impasse.
3.  Students will replay the improv.  This time the instructor will freeze the actors when a point of contention arises and ask “what are you feeling?”  The actor will attempt to label the emotion and will be coached by the instructor to take a deep breath and will re-enter the scenario.
4.  Continue the exercise until every group has enacted their improv.
Session Assessment
1.  In a post-exercise discussion, ask each class member whether they felt the conflict was better mediated when the characters were aware of what they were feeling before they acted.
2.  Ask the class to discuss moments which were effective in each improv.  Did identifying emotions prior to expressing the make the players less likely to become emotionally hijacked?
Relevant References in Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence: pp. 46-48
       Designed by M. Armstrong