LESSON 1. FEELINGS

Institution: „Carmen Sylva” Art High-School, Ploiesti, Romania

Grade: the 2nd (8-year old students)

Teachers: Hortensia Bogdan; portraits drawn by Liliana Marin, teacher of visual arts

Theme: Feelings

Crosscurricular activity involving communication in mother tongue (Romanian) and in a foreign language (English), natural science (biology), personal development, music, arts and crafts

Competences:

- Identifying and assigning the English words to basic emotions

- Expressing feelings/emotions, ideas, thoughts, points of view by various means (words, visual elements, music, body movements)

- Identifying the significance of simple artistic messages within familiar contexts

Educational resources:

-already existing: children’s song “If you’re happy” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4WNrvVjiTw ; short video from the movie „Frozen” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An2OaIbPSII

-especially created for this lesson: drawings/ paintings, a computer puzzle game, writings (narrative, riddles, short poems)

Starting from Paul Ekman’s theory according to which there are six basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise) which can be identified in facial expressions of people from all cultures, the students were encouraged to recognize basic emotions in themselves and in other people by „reading” facial and body expressions and to express basic emotions by means of language, paintings/ drawings, body movements (QR code – annex 2, annex 6, annex 9). They were also helped to become aware of their emotional state and to improve their English vocabulary with new words and expressions, as shown in the lesson plan (QR code – lesson plan). Thus, the students were led to gather given words depicting emotions in „families” and complete the conceptual map of each basic emotion previously learned during Personal Development classes (QR code - annex 5 – conceptual maps). In order to provide practice within contextualized frameworks, students were asked to read

a nonliterary text about emotions and to fill in a gap story (a literary text in which different emotions are the characters). They were also asked to write a short text (a poem under a standard format – Name of emotion/ Colour, taste, scent/ Actions (3 words)/

Idiom/  Imitative word/exclamation), thus encouraging students’ creativity and expression of own feelings/ emotions, ideas and thoughts by means of language. Using the portraits made by Mrs. Liliana Marin, teacher of visual arts, we created some riddles (QR code – portraits-puzzle ) which were also used by Dr. Francisco Perez to create the computer puzzle game (QR code - game). All the drawings used in annexes 5 and 6 were made by students, while those in annex 2 by Iulia Ignat, teacher of visual arts. QR code – short video.