Emotions Mixup is an SEL-based game for physical education that was designed to help your students make sense of the Mood Meter, develop their ability to properly label emotions, and have some fun along the way.
The playing area is divided into a four-zoned grid using colour-coordinated cones. Each zone carries the energy and pleasantness rating of its matching Mood Meter quadrant.
Correctly identify where each emotion the teacher calls out sits on the Mood Meter, and run to the matching zone.
Students should always keep their eyes up when running.
If possible, use non-stick polyspots and cones that are easy to see.
When creating the 3×3 grid, polyspots should be placed far enough apart to avoid overcrowding.
Builds allow you to increase the game's complexity, one layer at a time.
Students gather in the middle of the playing area. The teacher assigns one endline as the PLEASANT line and the opposite endline as the UNPLEASANT line.
The teacher calls out PLEASANT or UNPLEASANT and students run as fast as they can to that line.
Once students understand the lines, the teacher introduces the Mood Meter poster and explains how different emotions create different levels of pleasantness. Some emotions, like joy, feel good and are therefore pleasant. Others, like sadness, do not feel good and are therefore unpleasant.
Play then resumes, but this time the teacher calls out an emotion. Students run to whichever side they believe that emotion falls on.
The teacher now assigns one sideline as HIGH ENERGY and the other as LOW ENERGY.
As in Build One, students practise running to either line as the teacher calls out HIGH or LOW.
Once students understand the lines, the teacher reintroduces the Mood Meter poster and explains how different emotions create different levels of energy. Some emotions, like excitement, make us feel full of energy. Others, like exhaustion, make us feel sluggish.
Play resumes with the teacher calling out an emotion, and students running to the side they believe it falls on.
The teacher uses colour-coordinated cones to divide the playing area into four zones: red, blue, green, and yellow.
The teacher explains that the Mood Meter has these same four zones, and that each one carries its own energy and pleasantness rating. Blue is low energy and unpleasant, red is high energy and unpleasant, yellow is high energy and pleasant, and green is low energy and pleasant.
Now when the teacher calls out an emotion, students run to the zone they believe that emotion lives in.
You might see some interesting results in this build, so invite students to discuss why they made their choices. Self-awareness is an important social and emotional learning competency, and the more we discuss emotions the more we grow our capacity to identify them.
The teacher breaks each quadrant down into smaller sections by making a 3 by 3 grid of polyspots within each one.
Within each grid there are spots for low, medium, and high levels of energy and of pleasantness. The idea is to help students tune into the smaller differences between levels of emotion.
When the teacher calls out an emotion, students run to the quadrant they believe it lives in and stand near the spot representing where it sits on the Mood Meter's grid.
Once students have picked their location, the teacher describes the emotion and allows students to adjust their choices. Once choices are final, the teacher reveals the emotion's exact location.
By being able to label their emotions accurately, students are better placed to regulate those emotions in healthy ways.
Print the game sheet, leave it on your desk, and your sub has everything they need: the diagrams, the builds in order, what to say, and what to watch for. This one is $4. #PhysEdU Plus members get all 39, free forever, for $49 a year.
Games that build on the same tactics.
