Teach Your Students Emotional Awareness

Emotional awareness is a key component of social-emotional learning, helping students understand and manage their emotions in a healthy way. When students can identify and name their emotions, they’re better equipped to manage them, leading to improved behaviour, informed decision-making and positive relationships.

This creative resource has been designed by our teacher team to help young learners to explore their emotions. It features a blank face template, along with a variety of eyes and mouths which can be cut out and pasted on the face to reflect how they’re feeling. The resource also features 19 different emotion labels that can be used to help students articulate how they are feeling, with the added bonus of enhancing their emotional vocabulary. Some of the words included with the resource are:

• Happy
• Confused
• Sad
• Excited
• Angry
• And many more!

By completing this template, students will not only learn how to identify and name their own emotions, but they will also learn how to detect these emotions in others. This builds empathy, which is an important skill for positive social interactions and relationships.

Use This Emotional Awareness Activity in Your Classroom

This versatile resource can be used in many different ways to teach your students about the importance of emotional awareness. Here are some suggestions you might like to try with your students:

1. Class Discussions – After creating their faces, have students share their chosen emotions with the class or in small groups. This can lead to discussions about why they feel that way and what might help them manage their emotions.
2. Character Connections – Incorporate the templates into literacy lessons by having students create faces that match the emotions of characters in a story. Students can share reasons for why the character might be feeling that particular emotion.
3. Which Emotion? – Use the template as a teaching tool. Place velcro dots onto the face template and the customisable components so that different emotions can be created and shown to the students. Have the students try to identify the emotion being depicted, providing reasons for their inferences. 

Download This Emotions Activity

This emotions activity downloads as a black-and-white PDF. Use the Download button above to access this file.

You may wish to copy the face template on cardstock for added durability.

More Emotional Awareness Resources for Your SEL Lessons

Emotional awareness is a fundamental component of social-emotional learning. Click below to browse more resources to help you teach this concept to your students.

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Recognizing Feelings - Flashcards

Improve your students' emotional literacy with this set of feelings flashcards.

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Managing Emotions Mini-Book

Help your elementary students explore and manage their emotional responses with this printable mini-book.

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Identifying Emotions Interactive Activity

Help your students identify and explore common emotions with this engaging digital activity.