Teaching Deep Thinking and Emotions

 How does the character feel in this story?  How do you know?

These are comprehension questions that we ask our very youngest readers.  Many times the answer to the first question is "good" or "bad."  And to the second question, students have a difficult time explaining how they know that a character is feeling that way.  Reading facial expressions, restating evidence in text, and (in more complex texts) inferring are skills that require prior experience, practice, and (for some) explicit teaching.

To help students think deeply about the characters in the books read, they need the vocabulary to do so.  Let's look at one way to do this.

Attention Grabber

 

Pictures and conversation are a great place to start the vocabulary development.  All children like pictures of themselves.  I would suggest showing a picture(s) of your students and asking "how do they feel?"

This type of activity allows students to examine facial expressions and expand upon the vocabulary they already have.  Instead of the word "good," a student can be introduced to "cheerful" or "joyful."

Modeling

 

Building vocabulary is a great starting point.  Applying it is next step.  Charades is one way to make this application process fun.

To begin, the teacher would choose one charades card. These cards do not have words on them.  This allows for open interpretation to how the individual on the card is feeling.  It also allows the class (and educator) to use words that have been introduced to class.

A timer is set for 30 seconds.  The feeling or emotion is acted out by the teacher.  Students use the vocabulary that they know to describe feelings of their teacher.  Once the timer goes off or the correct word is said, the class can see the image on the card.  This is a time for you, the teacher, to model some other vocabulary that could be used like determined or persistent.

Practice

 

Once students have an understanding of how to play charades and a bank of vocabulary words has been formed, students are ready to practice in small groups or teams.  There are three versions available because every group of students needs something a little different.

One version has only a picture on each card.  The second version helps to build vocabulary by including a word with each picture.  And the third version helps to build empathy by asking students to share their feelings about a particular picture.  Each version provides students with the practice needed to build a stronger bank of words when describing characters.

Download

 

You can download the charades for FREE (2/20/2020-2/27/2020) by clicking on the image below or pin it for later.

Extension

 

Now that your students have built their emotional vocabulary, how do you apply this to deeper thinking?  It is all about the questions that you ask during and after reading.  Here are some questions that I ask my students after reading...

• How is the character feeling? How do you know?
• How did the character's feelings change from the beginning to the end of the story?
• How did the author tell us how the character was feeling?
• How did the illustrator show us how the character was feeling through the pictures?
• How did the character's actions show their feelings?
• When is a time that you felt the same emotions as the character

 

Need More?

 

Here are a couple videos that may help begin or continue your discussion around character emotions.

Thanks reading and following along today!





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