Duration: 20 minutes
SPIRIT Skills:
- Emotional awareness, regulation and communication
- Empathy
Brief Description:
Each group discusses the emotion they received. Students are invited to share personal stories connected to that emotion, using drawing or sentence starters to support expression and inclusion. Students sit in small groups and talk about a time when they felt the assigned emotion. They can:
- Share short personal stories using sentence starters like “I felt ___ when ___”
- Draw the moment they are remembering
- Use simple emotion vocabulary or emojis as prompts if needed
How does this develop particular SPIRIT skills
- Develops empathy through peer listening
- Supports emotional awareness by making private feelings visible and shareable
- Strengthens collaboration through respectful storytelling.
What do we want to achieve regarding SPIRIT skill development (student understanding and/or behaviour)?
- Students learn to recognize and name their own emotional experiences
- They practice expressing feelings clearly and listening to others without judgment
- They explore how one emotion can feel different to different people.
Academic/Curriculum Objective connection
- Language: Using personal narrative and sentence structures
- Visual arts: Expressing feelings through symbolic drawing.
Materials and tools needed for implementation
- Emotion sentence starters on cards
- Blank paper and coloured pencils
- Emoji/emotion posters for extra support.
Preparation notes
- Prepare differentiated supports for younger students or multilingual learners
- Offer the option of storytelling, drawing, or both
- Ensure psychological safety by reinforcing norms of respectful listening.
Guided Questions
- What does this emotion feel like in your body?
- What kind of situations usually make you feel this way?
- How would you describe this emotion to a robot or alien who doesn’t understand feelings?
Stage Debriefing Questions (Optional)
- Did your group find similar stories or very different ones?
- Was it easy or hard to share a story about this emotion?
Tips and Tricks for dealing with stage challenges
- Allow students to pass if they don’t feel ready to share
- Validate all stories as important, no matter how big or small
- Give examples or model your own short story if needed.