Research indicated that children who show their emotions
clearly and can decode the emotions from other people’s facial expressions are
the more popular and tend to have higher grades.
Facial Recognition Team Building
Exercise
Have the children sit in a circle and take turns having the
other children guess what their facial expression means.
Another way to teach facial expression of emotion is to use facial expression cards or photos of children and adult facial expressions. If you search for facial expressions of emotions you will find many examples of Dr. Paul Eckmans Basic six emotions.
Put the children in teams of three and have them number a
piece of paper from one to six. Show the photo of the faces with the Basic six
emotions. Have them work as a team to guess the correct emotion for each face. Then
go through the facial expressions with the whole group and see who got the most
right answers. Prepare so you can point out each part of the face and each cue
that leads to the correct interpretation of emotion. You can refer to Dr. Paul
Ekman’s work for accurate description and photos.
As homework ask them to ask their family to play “guess the
emotion” at the family dinner table. Family members can "put on" a
pretend emotion on their face and have the family guess what it is.
Another layer class exercise option is to play a documentary
and freeze frame on faces and have the class guess the emotion.
