Emotional Intelligence and Teenagers (LS-BG-506)

No doubt that people have emotions. The point is whether we can recognize and control these emotions. What happens to teenagers when they do not go to school and study from home? How do they feel?

Context and goals

The main aim of this Learning Scenario is to help students recognize their emotions and manage their behaviour and reactions in times of isolation. It also aims at engaging the students with meaningful activities and inspiring their artistic potential and creativity during a period of distance learning and no physical presence at school (due to COVID-19). Through this lesson students will develop their language skills and vocabulary, they will learn adjectives to describe their feelings and they will practice recognizing feelings and talking about them. Students will develop their emotional intelligence.

The Learning Scenario aims to develop 21st-century skills in students – creativity, communication, collaboration and critical thinking. It also makes the students aware of their own feelings and tries to teach them how to manage their behaviour.

Steps

The students discuss the way they feel at the moment, they get acquainted with Europeana and explore some pictures from the Europeana art collection and try to recognize the emotions the people in the pictures are experiencing. They will also try to identify themselves with these people and guess the reason why people are feeling like that. The students are introduced to a list of vocabulary – adjectives to describe feelings. Finally, students design activities to help them overcome boredom and the feeling of isolation. They create leaflets, posters and presentations to promote these activities. All the products are displayed on a Padlet wall.

Cross-curricular LS

The Learning Scenario combines English as a foreign language, Art and Technology:

English as a foreign language – the students learn and practice adjectives to describe emotions and feelings.

Art – the students study pictures from the Europeana art collection. They try to recognize the feelings of the people in the pictures.

Technology – the students use a lot of digital tools such as Canva, Padlet, Google slides, Answer Garden. They work in teams or individually to create posters, leaflets and presentations which present various activities that could be done to fight boredom and the feelings of isolation and anxiety.

Final thoughts

Being a teacher has always been challenging but it is even more difficult today because of COVID-19. Normally lessons teach content and skills. Students need to talk about their feelings as well and this is what this learning scenario is about.

Would you like to know more about this learning scenario? You can download it below:

Did you find this learning scenario interesting? You might also like:

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CC BY-NC 4.0: the featured image used to illustrate this article has been found on Europeana and provided by the Promoter Digital Gallery.