The West Wing is continuing their exploration of non-verbal communication that started in November. In viewing their photos in a shared binder, the teachers noticed a limited amount of emotional descriptors beyond happy, sad, scared, mad, and silly.
We also began to see the children becoming more attached to who is in the picture rather than the nuanced meaning expressed by the face. To redirect the children back to our intention of working to better understand each other’s perspectives by learning non-verbal communication, Teacher Jessica introduced permanent markers to trace the lines and expressions of the photos onto transparency sleeves.
These line drawings removed the “who” to support the children in seeing a wide variety of expression. The descriptors used by the children to name the emotions became more sophisticated as a result. Words like disappointed, frustrated, disgusting, and brave become a part of our discussion. We are slowing down to examine our understanding of these new words.
