In today’s digitally enhanced world, many teachers have quite rightly developed a strong focus on connectivity and digital literacy. Our children are spending more and more time on their devices both in and out of school. So perhaps it is even more vital that we don’t forget other life skills – the ones related to human interaction.
We often assume that these will develop naturally as learners play together. But as children spend increasing amounts of time online, CSEFEL (The Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning) has emphasised the need for classroom strategies that develop social and emotional skills alongside other knowledge.
When we have to write learning outcomes, ideas about life skills can feel rather vague, but we are gradually becoming more principled in the way we achieve this. The Cambridge Life Competencies Framework, for example, provides ‘skills descriptors’ to help teachers plan for skills such as communication, collaboration, emotional development and social responsibilities. In books like Power Up, skills descriptors related to life skills are included alongside linguistic ones, with tasks and activities designed to support them. With this in mind, here are a few practical ideas based on three key emotional competencies in the framework that can help even the youngest learners develop. I’m sure you will have plenty more of your own!
1. Naming your emotions
- Encourage learners to recognise and name emotions. This has the added benefit of language development. You can do this via simple games. A traditional activity you might know is miming emotions: learners mime how they are feeling and the other learners guess the adjective. Alternatively, learners could label emoticons projected on the board or on a worksheet (you can make one using websites such as getemoji) with correct adjectives. You could then ask learners to tell stories using the emoticons. You can even give them a narrative to develop and then ask them to write their own. For example:
I was feeling very
because I lost my
walking in the
My mum said not to
and…
2. Emoticon diary
- If you allow digital devices in the classroom, you could play emoticon diary to encourage learners to talk about emotions. Learners work in pairs using their messaging apps. Each learner creates a message using only emoticons to represent their day / a holiday / an activity. Their partner guesses how they were feeling. The learner then describes what they did and how they felt. If you prefer not to use devices, learners can always draw these instead.
3. The importance of empathy
- Help learners identify feelings in others and empathise. This can be done via stories and imaginative activities that allow learners to place themselves in the situation of others. In Power Up, fun stories are used to help learners reflect and empathise. You can also do simple tasks with pictures. Show learners a picture of people in interesting situations. Ask them to imagine that they are one of the people in the picture. How do they feel? Why? What are they thinking / saying? They can share ideas then follow up with a role play, imagining they are the people in the pictures or by writing the diary of one of the people.
4. Role play
- Identify how learners can express and share their emotions in a positive way. Use role play to help learners understand how to express themselves. You can teach useful functional language in advance, e.g. I’m feeling upset because… I am very worried so I’d like…
5. Make mood posters
- Include collaboration and problem solving tasks which encourage learners to work together. A good starting point is to ask them to create a mood poster. They design a poster or Venn diagram, mapping different feelings in small groups, e.g. happy / excited / worried / upset and so on. Put the posters on the wall. Every now and then in a lesson you can ask learners to work in pairs and point to how they are feeling using the mood posters they created. They can explain why they feel that way and, if necessary, their partner can empathise or make suggestions to improve their mood.
By using tasks such as those described, you can help your learners develop both their linguistic and their life skills!
Hope you are now feeling 
References
Center on the Social and Emotional Foundations for Early Learning:
http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/resources/strategies.html#teachingskills
The Cambridge Life Competencies Framework: https://languageresearch.cambridge.org/clc
For more activity ideas for your young learner classroom, have a look at 5 ways to engage mixed ability groups of young learners.