An Emotional Menagerie

#TheCompleteSeries7lessons

Challenge your class to build and grow their vocabulary around emotions and different calming techniques that can be used to regulate emotions in a safe way. Then, the children will explore the structure and common features of the poems in the menagerie to prepare them for creating their own emotion poem.

Each of the seven lessons in this scheme comes with a detailed lesson plan, differentiated activity ideas, lesson slides and accompanying printable resources to support your class. You'll have everything you need to teach your Year 6 class some important emotional literacy as well as giving them the opportunity to create beautiful poetry.

#Lesson1WhatareEmotions

Use this first lesson to broaden your class's vocabulary around emotions and discuss more complex emotions. The children are challenged to define and combine simpler emotions and use these to explore more complex emotions. Along the way, they will be making links in vocabulary and gaining a mental bank of words which they can use in their future writing.

With a detailed lesson plan, lesson input slides and printable resources, this lesson download will give you everything you need to teach a lesson based around the book 'An Emotional Menagerie' by the School of Life.

#Lesson2EffectsofEmotions

How do our bodies and minds react to different emotions? This second lesson revolves around discussion about what happens to us as individuals when we experience different emotions. The children will think about physical effects that we may or may not see in another person, as well as some of the mental effects and thoughts that emotions can provoke.

This lesson download gives you everything you need to engage your Year 6 class in a thorough discussion about emotions and the reaction we can have. The pack comes with a lesson plan, lesson slides and all the printable resources you'll need to support the children in their independent activity.

#Lesson3RegulatingEmotions

After discussing different emotions and how they affect our minds and bodies, this lesson requires the children to think about how they can regulate emotions. Your class will discuss how when our emotions make us (or someone else) unsafe, we need to think about how we can calm the emotions. Alternatively, your class can think about ways to appreciate and re-create emotions we like.

In a lesson that is as much about emotional literacy, as writing and expanding our vocabulary, the children will match emotions to calming techniques, or offer advice to someone who may need help regulating emotions.

Download everything you need to teach your class about appreciating and regulating emotions.

#Lesson4AnimalComparisonPoems

Now that your class have studied how emotions can affect us, and how we can regulate them, the children will have an initial go at mimicking the style of the menagerie poems by writing their own animal comparison verses.

Using a selection of poems from the book to inspire their own writing, the children will think about how to create an image of an animal (real or imaginary) to compare their chosen emotion to. They may wish to challenge themselves by choosing a less common emotion and bring it to life in a short comparison poem to fit with the other poems in the menagerie.

This lesson download comes with a detailed lesson plan, lesson slides as well as the accompanying printable resources, giving you everything you need to provide differentiated and engaging activities.

#Lesson5StructureandPoeticFeatures

In this lesson the children will focus their discussions on the structure and features of the poems in preparation for creating their own poem to fit in the original menagerie.

The children will put on their detect