Emotion Coaching

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Digital training session

The Educational Psychology Service are all trained in Emotion Coaching and can deliver this training to school staff and parents/carers. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we created an online digital session for school staff. If you are interested in accessing this contact your link EP or locality email (EPSDee@aberdeencity.gov.uk EPSDon@aberdeencity.gov.uk or EPSWest@aberdeencity.gov.uk

We also have a short 20 minute taster summary video below for all staff to access!

Digital training session

We also have a short 20 minute taster summary video below for all staff to access!

Emotion Coaching taster

To support staff working with children and young people in schools who have not accessed Emotion Coaching training, we have created this brief taster session video to introduce you to Emotion Coaching and how to begin using it in practice.

EC staff session.mp4

Classroom Ideas

Emotional check ins

In the taster video we discuss the Anger Iceberg which includes lots of descriptive emotion words for pupils to use during reflective discussions. Emotion check ins with pictures and emotion words are also a great way to promote pupils' emotional understanding. Regular check ins support pupils to reflect on how they are feeling and also give teachers insight into pupils emotions. Making discussions about feelings and emotions a normal part of the school day promotes emotional literacy and also means that discussions about emotions won't seem out of place or new for pupils when the stakes are high.

Sometimes pupils can struggle with labelling emotions and The Blob Tree is a great tool for pupils who find naming emotions difficult or have limited language skills.

The Blobs are genderless and colourless, and there are no prescribed emotions attached. This makes them very inclusive and allows children to colour in or choose which blob most shows how they are feeling, without demanding they choose an emotion word. Depending upon the child, this can then allow for a variety of options for further discussion.

'High Highs and Low Lows'

Staff can ask pupils once a week (or more often) to share their 'high high' for the day or week, as well as their 'low low' for the day or week. The 'high high' is the best thing that happened to them, or the time they felt the happiest. The 'low low' is the time they felt the saddest, or the worst thing that happened to them. Again, this normalises talking openly about feelings and emotions, including difficult or challenging emotions. This also provides staff with a natural opportunity to show empathy towards pupils, for example; “Aww, that sounds frustrating! I’d feel frustrated about that, too."

If a pupil is always saying “happy,” never wants to share feelings, etc., this is a clue to staff that this pupil may need more social emotional support. Both the Daily Check-In and High Highs / Low Lows, these can be done as journaling activities. Pupils can have a journal where they write or draw their feelings, highs, or lows.

Note: Pupils who do not wish to take part or volunteer their emotions in a larger group, should be allowed to simply observe.

Talk to pupils about how their brains work:

Create a 'Brain House'

Emotion coaching is based on brain science. In the video above, Dan Siegel describes the brain as a house with an upstairs and a downstairs.

The downstairs brain or limbic region controls our emotional reactions (e.g. our fight, flight or freeze response to anger or fear).

The upstairs brain controls more complex functions such as thinking, reasoning and planning. When the 'upstairs' brain is working well, we are able to regulate and manage our big emotions.

When under threat or stress (real or imagined), our upstairs brain can go offline, and our downstairs brain takes over. Dan Siegel calls this 'flipping our lid' and as our upstairs and downstairs brains are no longer communicating, we can no longer control our reactions to our big emotions.

You can support pupils to engage by having them create their own brain house. Once they have created their own characters, you can use these to create a shared dialogue to support pupils to regulate their big emotions. You can support pupils to come up with a list of strategies that work for them when they are close to flipping their lids. We've got further strategy ideas below.

Please see the Hey Sigmund website for full instructions for this activity.

Activities to soothe and calm pupils

When the downstairs brain is in charge, pupils no longer feel calm and regulated. Their nervous systems have become unbalanced and we may see signs of this in their behaviour. But we can support pupils by teaching them strategies to soothe and calm the nervous system. We can also incorporate regular sensory breaks and activities into the school day to help pupils remain calm, focussed and ready to learn. Children learn to self-regulate through a trusted adult acting as a co-regulator (see also our page on self-regulation). We need to teach pupils methods of regulation and talk to them about how these make us feel. Ideas can include:

Breathing exercises (some great ideas here)
Regular sensory breaks and activities during the day (this booklet on Sensory Behaviour from Falkirk council is great and has some lovely suggestions for both calming and alerting strategies).
Drawing how you feel
Yoga exercises
Do a jigsaw
Make a glitter bottle or other sensory activities (see below)
Colouring in
Mindfulness activities (see our page on Mindfulness for activity ideas).
Self-talk; teach pupils coping self-talk or affirmations such as 'take it easy', 'stay cool', 'don't let him bug me', 'don't give up', 'it's okay to feel frustrated', 'I can take a break' etc.