Emotional intelligence significantly impacts a child's development, success, mental health, resilience, relationships, and academic performance. Teaching emotions equips children with essential tools to navigate challenges, communicate effectively, and foster healthy connections with others.

Step 1: Help students become self aware

Teaching emotions starts with helping children recognise and identify their own emotions. This involves building an emotional vocabulary and familiarising them with various emotions and facial expressions. By doing so, children develop better self-awareness and understanding of their feelings.

Recognising sensations like hunger, tiredness, excitement, or grumpiness empowers students to control their emotions. For instance, they can relax tense shoulders and take deep breaths when nervous. Identifying emotions is vital for self-management, behaviour, school success, and personal growth.

Step 2: Teach students that their self-regulation mindset can be developed and grown.

Teaching students that their self-regulation mindset is not fixed but can be developed is essential. This belief fosters resilience and perseverance. By understanding that self-regulation is a skill that improves with practice, students are empowered to take control of their emotional wellbeing. Encouraging a growth mindset, educators promote the idea that students can improve their ability to regulate emotions and manage behaviour over time.

Step 3: Teach students where in the brain emotions occur and why they are experiencing certain emotions

In recent years, science has taught us a lot about how emotions work in our brains. We've discovered that the prefrontal cortex is responsible for identifying emotions and linking different parts of our brain together. The good news is that our brains can change. Even if you're naturally shy, you can learn to feel comfortable in stressful situations. If you're bold, you can learn to pay attention to warning signs and be more cautious. Experiences, especially in nurturing relationships, or practising new ways of thinking can actually change our brain.

Techniques like mindfulness or deep breathing exercises can activate and develop the prefrontal cortex, responsible for emotional regulation. Empowering children to engage in activities that promote emotional control enhances their active participation in emotional wellbeing.

Step 4: Teach students how to manage their emotions. 

Self-regulation is the ability to manage emotions and behaviour appropriately. It's like having a set of skills to handle oneself. Overwhelming emotions can hinder focus and functioning, but with attention and effort, students can learn to control their emotions and physical responses.

Self-regulation is crucial for students to handle their emotions in different situations. One strategy is the STOP method: Stop, Take 3 breaths, Observe, Proceed with a healthy choice. It enhances learning by regulating attention and focus, allowing better retention and understanding.

Self-regulation offers numerous benefits. It fosters perseverance, self-discipline, goal-setting, initiative, confidence, resilience, and adaptability. Failing to work with emotions can hinder learning, memory, creativity, stress management, and interpersonal relationships. Developing self-regulation skills is unquestionably valuable!

Step 5: Help students feel comfortable communicating their emotions with others 

Understanding how others are feeling is a crucial component of emotional intelligence. Building trusting relationships is crucial both within and outside of the classroom and can be helped by this skill. Academic success is important, but so are personal development and a successful career in the future.

The cool part is that everyone benefits when we emphasise building emotional intelligence, not just students. The community as a whole becomes healthier, the school culture as a whole improves, and teachers and carers feel better. It lessens disruptive behaviour and bullying, and it makes it possible to offer each student tailored support.

Teaching emotions is a fundamental aspect of nurturing emotional literacy in children. By teaching and developing the strategies and activities to manage emotions, we can equip children with the necessary skills to navigate their emotions, build healthy relationships, and thrive in all aspects of life. As we invest in teaching emotions, we empower children to become emotionally resilient, empathetic, and well-rounded individuals.

Find out how you can introduce these concepts to students in our free resource ‘A Guide to Teaching Emotions’.

Want to learn more about how to implement these best practices in teaching your students to identify, understand and manage their emotions? Book a FREE wellbeing consultation with us today!