Want to Sharpen SEL Skills? Have Them Write Their Feelings

| By: Committee for Children

“THE END,” “and then I went home,” and “it was fun” are all endings students use in their writing way too often.

Encouraging children to identify their feelings can be a great mini-lesson during writing workshops and a teaching point during a one-on-one writing conferences with a student. If we are truly creating a socially and emotionally sound classroom, and especially if we are teaching the Second Step curriculum, we can integrate “identifying feelings” into our writing instruction to increase our students’ social-emotional learning throughout the day.

During writing time, when I confer one-on-one with children, many of my teaching points lately have been about creating more interesting endings. For example, the other day I was conferring with a child about her trip to Georgia where she visited a waterpark and attended a dolphin show. She was doing an amazing job of writing a “small moment” and stretching the scene of watching these dolphins jump in the air, dance with one another, and splash. She added how beautiful it was. Then she ended her story with “and then we went back to the hotel.” But the ending needs to leave the reader still wanting more, or with that beautiful picture in their mind that the writer worked so hard to create. So I asked, “What did you feel after you saw this amazing dolphin show?” She responded, “So happy. It was the best day of my life.” Then my job was easy. I said, “Write that!” She did and her story became this incredible movie in the reader’s mind where a little girl—instead of just going back to a hotel—had the best day of her life. She could feel it, and now the reader could, too.

I have found myself asking, “And how did that make you feel?” a lot. Maybe this is because we are not asking that question enough in our daily lives when talking with children. If we do not have these conversations, children are not automatically reflecting on their own. It is our job as teachers to ask these hard questions. Helping our children identify their feelings will not only help them grow socially and emotionally but also as writers.

When asked how students are feeling, be prepared to hear, “happy, sad, disappointed,” or, more often than not, “I don’t know.” This is another opportunity to brainstorm different feelings and integrate social-emotional learning opportunities into writing instruction. These teaching points can be applied not just at the end of stories, but to add detail to the middle. For instance, if you came upon a student who was writing “I went to the store. I bought a candy bar. It was a Snickers. I took a bite and it was so yummy,” a teaching point might be “How did you feel after you bought the candy bar?” The child may say “Proud because I had been saving all my money for a week” or “Happy because I love candy”, or “Excited because it was my first candy bar ever.” Then you can help teach them how a writer goes back and adds what they are thinking and feeling. It might read, “I bought a candy bar. It was a Snickers. I was so excited because it was my first candy bar ever. I took a bite and it was so yummy.”

We know good writers never leave the feelings out. Yes, sometimes they use fancier words to describe the feeling, and as they progress and develop, these are great opportunities in and of themselves, but first writers must know how they were feeling in that situation before they can put it down on paper. Getting children to identify, talk, and write about their feelings can make a huge difference in their social and emotional lives as well as their writing. The END! (Just kidding…)

Help your writer identify their feelings. Then remind them, in all the stories they write in the days ahead, that good endings can involve a feeling. See how their writing progresses, and watch how they grow socially and emotionally.