Resilience, Rights & Respectful Relationships 

What Is Emotional Literacy?

TOPIC 1: EMOTIONAL LITERACY 

Emotional literacy can be defined as the abilit to understand ourselves and other people. It includes the ability to understand, express and manage our own emotions, build empathy, and to respond appropriately to the emotions of others. Building a large vocabulary for emotions helps to increase emotional literacy and build self-awareness and empathy for others. 

An example of a RRRR lesson in Yr 1/2 class 

Activity 3: Acts of Friendship 

Learning intention 

• Students identify emotions in others 

• Students empathise with others 

• Students suggest ways to help others

Equipment 

• Room to move

Method 

1. Read out the following scenario, or make up your own: 

Kristin had a bad day. Her friends said, ‘We don’t like you. Your hair looks funny. You can’t play with us’. 

Choose volunteers to role play the scenario. Ask: What feelings might Kristin have had when her friends told her she could not play with them? Write these emotions on the board.

2. Bring some volunteers out to stand next to the character Kristen. Ask them to make statues to show the way these different emotions might all be present at once. Point out that people can have more than one emotion at the same time – like anger and sadness and fear. Ask: What could other children nearby do to help Kristin?

3. Place some additional volunteers to be students playing nearby. Ask them to show how they could help out. Take it in turns to show how to do these different acts of kindness. Ask: What feelings might Kristin have when these children are friendly to her? Ask the statue volunteers to make new statues to show these new emotions and add them to the list on the board

Review

 Invite students to review the learning intentions. Ask: How did the activity help us learn to recognise emotions in others? How did it help us to think about what we could do to help someone who might be feeling a negative emotion (such as sadness or fear).