DAILY CHECK-IN TOOL
DAILY CHECK-IN TOOL | POSTER FORMAT
The Friendzy Daily Check-in Tool creates a space for students to practice self-awareness through identifying their emotions.
The Friendzy Daily Check-in Tool equips students with grade appropriate vocabulary and visual indicators designed to help students in identifying and naming their emotional state. The Friendzy Daily Check-in Tool is grade-banded and available to download in four convenient sizes:
An 8x11 Handout
A half-page desktop format
A multi-page classroom poster
A digital version slide deck
Click here to download all formats of the Daily Check-in Tool!
DAILY CHECK-IN TOOL | DESK FORMAT
Use this brief daily exercise to make a big difference in your students’ overall wellbeing. When you talk about emotions every day, you are increasing every student’s emotional literacy and teaching them that emotions are temporary and can vary in intensity. This will lead to greater academic success and coping skills!
Remember, you may not “fix” the emotion, but you can acknowledge it! The Friendzy Daily Check-in Tool will allow you to acknowledge the emotions your students are experiencing and in doing so, will demonstrate care and concern for that student. As the teacher, you can model emotional expression and healthy coping skills! Students need to see adults in their lives identify and acknowledge their own emotions in a way that is healthy and productive. You can do it!
See it in Action!
Watch this video to see how students use the Daily Check-in Tool during morning meetings. Reflect on the following questions on your own or with a buddy.
What did you notice about how students interacted with the Daily Check-in Tool?
How can the Daily Check-in Tool help build relationships in your classroom?
How do you envision the Daily Check-in Tool being implemented in your classroom?
Implementation Tips
Plan the Roll Out: Think about how you will roll out the Daily Check-in Tool. We recommend introducing it to the whole class during a time when students are emotionally regulated. This will help them use it more effectively when they are dysregulated, or feeling strong emotions. Give them time to practice interacting with the chart, naming emotions, and describing situations or experiences when they have felt those emotions. Reference the poster when sharing your own emotions and model for students the process of connecting a sensory experience to words. i.e. ”When my heart starts beating fast and my mouth starts feeling dry, it usually means I am feeling anxious about something.”
Make it Visible: Post the emotion chart of your choice around the classroom for all students to see. Utilize smaller sizes like the desk tag (we recommend laminating these), so students can have a personal version of the tool.
Start a Routine: Encourage students to interact with the emotion chart daily. Consider putting the poster-sized version on your classroom door and have students point to the word or image that best describes how they are feeling as they enter the classroom to start the day, after lunch, and during any other classroom transition times. Before transitioning to a new lesson or project, direct students to check-in with themselves on how they are feeling. Students can point to their emotion as you walk around the class, journal, or share with a classmate to practice naming emotions and having empathy for one another.
Support Reading Comprehension: Students of all ages can benefit from using the tool to support reading or literacy comprehension. Pair the emotion chart that your students use with reading or literacy comprehension discussions to support students in accurately describing character emotions and motivations.
Specific Tips for Your Students
Early Ed
Start a Daily Check-in arrival routine. Display a poster-sized version of the Animal Emotion Chart. Print photos of each students’ face and attach it to a magnet, piece of velcro, or clothespin. Each morning, students should move their face to the emotion they are feeling.
Ask students what each emotion looks and feels like. Clearly describe body language to help them identify emotions in themselves and others.
K-5
Use the Exit Tickets “My Emoji” or “End of Day Roadmap” to engage students in identifying their emotions at the start or end of the day.
Start a Daily Check-in arrival routine. Display a poster-sized version of the emotion chart of your choice. Write students’ names on clothespins and encourage students to move their clip to identify their emotion. This can be changed throughout the day, especially after big transitions (think lunch or recess).
Middle School
Use the Exit Tickets “My Emoji” or “End of Day Roadmap” to engage students in identifying their emotions at the start or end of the day.
Print and laminate a desk tag for each student. Encourage them to tape it into a notebook or folder they bring to all classrooms. This can help students utilize the tool throughout the school day.
EMOTIONS WHEEL | HIGH SCHOOL
The Emotions Wheel is a tool to help students learn to identify the emotions that they are experiencing at any given moment. Once students can identify how they feel, they can respond to, resolve, and manage emotions.
With increased emotional vocabulary comes more honesty, specificity, and creativity in the sharing of our emotions. This enables us to develop closer relationships and to be more vulnerable with one another, which, in turn, can allow us to be more supportive of one another. It also helps us to grow in our own self-awareness.
Background
The Feelings Wheel was developed by Dr. Gloria Willcox in 1982. In her work as a psychotherapist, she noticed that many of her clients lacked the emotional vocabulary to accurately express how they were feeling. Pulling inspiration from other great works, such as Joseph Zinker’s ideas of the therapist as an artist and ideas of Robert Plutchick, a professor of psychology from New York, of describing feelings by color, she sought to create a tool that would encourage increased emotional literacy for individuals.
Dr. Willcox’s Feelings Wheel begins with six basic emotions: mad, sad, scared, joyful, powerful, and peaceful. Radiating out from these six emotions are a variety of secondary and tertiary emotions. For example, let’s pretend I feel sad. I can begin by acknowledging I feel sad in the center of the wheel. From there, I can use the wheel to further understand the kind of sadness I am feeling (ie. lonely, or even further, inadequate). How I respond and manage feeling lonely might look different than if I was feeling ashamed or bashful, which also stems from the basic emotion of sadness. It’s important to recognize that we might even be feeling more than one emotion at once. That’s okay and normal! This tool can be very helpful in allowing us to dig deeper into the root of our feelings, which can allow us to respond, react, and manage our emotions in even better ways.
Implementation Tips
Play the 30 Circles Challenge. Students will be tasked with independently identifying 30 different emotions in word or emoji form. Have a discussion about the emotions they came up with and pay attention to any trends you notice.
Unpack the Emotions Wheel. Ask students what they notice about the three rings of the wheel and how it is structured.
How do the colors represent emotions?
How do the rings build off one another?
How would using this wheel help you identify your emotions more specifically?
Which words do you tend to use most often? Could you get more accurate?
Give students a voice. Use the following questions to gauge how students want to use the Daily Check-in Tool throughout the year.
In what ways would you like to check in with each other this year? How could the Emotions Wheel help in this process?
How can we be supportive classmates as our peers share? How can we create an environment where students feel welcome to share?
Be consistent. Post the Emotions Wheel on a slide or in your classroom each day. Ask students to identify how they are feeling, using more than one word if necessary. Encourage students to use words in the middle or outer ring to get specific about how they feel.
GOOGLE SLIDE DECK FORMAT & GOOGLE FORM FORMAT
GOOGLE SLIDE DECK
GOOGLE FORM
