Exploring Our Feels

Welcome back everyone! Over here at Adams City we are diligently working toward holiday break, but before break is... dun dun dun... FINALS! At this time of year tension is high between my students feeling both stress and exhaustion, which is why our lesson about Emotions fell at a good time. We not only discussed mental health, but also connected the week before's lessons on the brain to help us understand why we have been feeling this way. We not only related the Emotions lesson with the stress from school, but also the stress, anger, sadness, fear, and happiness they experience outside of the classroom.

We spoke candidly about each of the 6 universal emotions - Sadness, Happiness, Anger, Surprise, Fear, and Disgust. We did an activity where 6 groups of students made spider charts on posters, writing down images, words, and phrases that came to mind when they thought about experiencing each emotions. Each group rotated so that everyone had a chance to give input about each emotion. I thought it was interesting that in almost every single classroom, the emotion that had the most words around it at the end of the activity was Sadness. We took a moment to acknowledge this and talk about mental health in relation to their generation, it isn't always happiness and rainbows when you're growing up in a community like Commerce City where resources that can attribute to your success is limited. But we talked about the importance of coping mechanisms, support systems, and shifting perspectives to a positive outlook in relation to Today I Choose.

We also utilized this lesson to watch Inside Out, an award winning Pixar movie that dives into the psychology of the brain in relation to the main emotions that humans experience. To ensure engagement, I found an Inside Out fill in the blank hand out that explored all of the different emotions broken down in the movie. The movie made us feel all of the emotions right along with the main character, Riley, it had even the most quiet students laughing and even crying... Especially when Bing Bong got left behind in the obsolete memory abyss - symbolizing what we all go through when we grow up and mature. It was not only extremely relatable but so educational in a fun and colorful way.

Until next week,
Ms. Castro