Social Skills Week Two (Oct.) - Emotional IQ
Daniel Golman’s (1995) research into emotional intelligence identified key elements that contribute to interpersonal success. By developing and using these elements of emotional intelligence, students have the capacity to increase their emotional IQ. This week (10/27 - 10/29) in social skills groups, we are focusing on the skills of knowing one’s emotions and recognizing the emotions of others. As Bodine and Crawford (1999) wrote, “Emotional self-awareness is…the cornerstone of emotional intelligence, serving as a building block for the other fundamentals of emotional intelligence.”
Cool in School boys (Tue. Oct 27) - Emotional identification is also important for the young children. While empathy (the ability to recognize and understand the feelings of others) increases as children mature, young children are able to learn about their own feelings and the feelings of others. Developing this skill at a young age will positively impact their school experience. We read the book Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller and played emotion charades. Emotion charades is a great game to work on emotional awareness. An instructional sheet on how to play can be retrieved below. We also drew a feeling face.
Success (Wed. Oct 29) - We begin this group by reviewing last week’s magic trick - catching invisible stones. Several of the boys are great at this! We then moved on to emotions and the importance emotions play in all of our lives - even the lives of boys. We played “Emotion Charades” (see below for game instructions). Many of the boys were great at acting out certain emotions and guessing the emotions of others. This week’s magic trick is the “Magic Penny” in which students will change the penny’s emotional state. This is a fun trick that draws lots of “oohs and aahs”, but that also has important real-world applications, showing us that we can change our emotions.
Cool in School girls (Thurs. Oct 30) - Many girls, even young girls, are adept at recognizing emotion in others. This is a skill that should be nurtured and around which boundaries should be placed (we control our emotions, no one else’s). We read the book Do Unto Otters by Laurie Keller, played Emotion Charades, and drew a feeling face.
Link to Emotion Charades word document: emotion-charades
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