Emotions, Perspective Taking and Solving Conflicts

To build a classroom community kindergartners need to learn how to work together and resolve conflicts that may arise. For this to happen they must learn to recognize emotions and understand the perspective of others. Understanding how others feel is often a challenge for young children.  However, once kindergartners begin to recognize the emotions of other people around them, they can start to recognize how their actions affect others as well.  Once they can understand what another person feels and why they feel a certain way due to something that happened, both children can come up with solutions to conflicts that satisfy them both, or what we call “Win-Win” solutions. Being able to recognize facial expressions and name emotions is a first step. 

We are reading books whose characters exhibit different emotions in various situations. We are discussing why a character feels a particular emotion and the actions that occurred to cause the character to feel that way.  We are looking at how one character’s actions and emotions also have an effect on other character’s emotions and actions. We are discovering that a person can feel a range of emotions, especially when they are hurt or angry. Our discussions related to characters have been a springboard to real life experiences These conversations have given children in our class the opportunity to express how they have felt in a similar situation or a time when they felt the same emotion. 

An amazing comment that has helped our class to focus on identifying emotions came when a child said that a person's eyes tell you what they are thinking and how they feel.  This insightful comment has led us to always look at the characters in our books and figure out what they are feeling.  Most importantly, we look to connect the actions that the character did or that happened to him/her to the emotion they are feeling or may have caused another character to feel.  We have discovered that a person’s eyebrows can also reveal how a person is feeling.  For example, someone may have a smiling mouth, but “crinkled” eyebrows, which may signal a feeling of uncertainty or confusion.  In our classroom we will look to one another and read what our eyes and brows are saying to each other as well.

A few weeks ago we made feeling puppets with interchangeable facial expressions and role-played different emotions that your child took home on Open House Night.  We made a list of ideas describing what Partners do and experienced several partner lessons in which each partner had to give over control to the other.  This often took some negotiation and practice listening to and following what their partner said to do!  Our partner work extends into our math and literacy work as we remember to follow the guidelines of what a good partner does when working with another.  We have met the famous Penny and Danny, a.k.a. The Problem Puppets, too!   Penny and Danny have a knack for getting into conflicts with one another.  In several play scenarios, the puppets were able to work out their conflict with some easy solutions, but this week their problems become more complex and require more thinking to come up with Win-Win Solutions that they BOTH agree to follow.  My scenarios for Penny and Danny problems come from actual conflicts I have witnessed in our class so that children can begin to make the connection between practicing the steps to Conflict Resolution with Penny and Danny to their very own lives here in school and beyond.  Our conflict resolution steps include:

1. Please Stop

2. State the Problem: Both children state what they feel is the problem

3. Brainstorm several Win-Win Solutions or Ways to Solve the Problem

4. Agree on One Solution to follow

5. Follow through on the agreement. 
6. Gain adult support if needed

For several weeks we have been reading and studying about a character named David, especially in the book, David Goes To School who seems to stir up many emotions within himself and others.  We have linked his actions with his own emotions and what others around him feel due to his actions.  We even explored what David might do next to resolve a conflict and thereby change how others might feel.  

This week we will role-play more conflict situations and use what we have learned about understanding emotions to resolve them so that each person agrees.  We started making our own problem puppets to act this out!  Next week we will read about two Dr. Seuss characters, The Zax, who actually never agree on a solution and discuss how that affects their lives and those around them!