Feelings and Conflict Resolution

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. 

Throughout the year we read books whose characters exhibit different emotions in various situations. We discuss why a character feels a particular emotion and the actions that occurred to cause the character to feel that way.  We look at how one character’s actions and emotions affect other character’s emotions and actions.  In our study we have discovered 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 the opportunity to express how they have felt in a similar situations and what emotions they have experienced.

Several years ago a child said to me that a person's eyes tell you what they are thinking and how they feel.  This insightful comment has stuck with me and influenced my teaching;  if children have not noticed this I teach it explicitly because it leads to truly understanding how one's actions affect other people.  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. 

We made feeling puppets with interchangeable facial expressions and role-played different emotions.  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 together. 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.  However, like real life, some 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 read about a character named David 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.  We will cycle back to David in the coming weeks as we add new layers to learning about being a member of a community.  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!  Next we will learn strategies for mindfully calming our own selves when we are in conflict situations.  In the first frame below you will see that we met our school police resource person, Office Mellen.