Teaching Tool - Body and Brain - Responses and Feelings (Grade 2)

The purpose of these resources is to prepare educators for teaching about a person's body and brain concerning their feelings and responses.

Learning goals

I will demonstrate an understanding of how our bodies and brain respond to challenging or uncomfortable situations
I will describe what to do to feel better during stressful, challenging or uncomfortable times
I will classify different types of feelings with an emotional vocabulary

Core knowledge content provides the teacher with the background information needed to prepare and teach this health class.

Grades 1-8: Health and Physical Education (2019)

D1.6 demonstrates an understanding of how a person's body and brain respond to challenging or uncomfortable situations and describe what they can do to feel better at those times. This specific expectation is also connected with the social emotional learning expectations A1.1 Emotions, A1.4 Relationships and A1.5 Self.

Body and brain responses: To start the lesson, students will play a quick game of charades using feeling words, such as happy, sad, mad, tired, surprised, and scared. For the main activity, students will be put into small groups or partners and will get a poster titled "How Does This Feeling Feel?". Each group will be assigned a feeling. The student is to draw the different emotions onto the body to show the feeling that was assigned. After finishing, the students will do a gallery walk. If virtual, this can be done with a digital slideshow.
Bounce back butterflies: This activity gets students to anonymously create and share butterflies with caring and kind words written on them to brighten a classmate's day.
Emotional vocabulary: This lesson plan introduces the concept of emotional regulation and specific vocabulary that is used to identify various emotions and feelings.
Emotional well-being education activities: This resource has a collection of emotional well-being education activities that aim to help educators develop an understanding of strategies for emotional well-being. Refer to the activities It's All in the Coping CARDS and Stress Ball Creation.

Children's mental health learning series: This online resource is a learning series that focuses on children's mental health and was designed to provide educators, caregivers, families and professionals with helpful information to increase knowledge and help support children and youth with mental health concerns.
Easy and fun mental health activities for home: This resource includes a series of 12 easy and fun activities for children to use in adopting key strategies in the development of social-emotional learning skills.

1.3 identify a variety of reading comprehension strategies and use them appropriately before, during and after reading to understand texts
1.5 make inferences about texts using stated and implied ideas from the texts as evidence
1.6 understanding of texts by connecting the ideas in them to their knowledge, experience and insights, to other familiar texts, and the world around them
1.7 analyzing texts and explain how specific elements in them contribute to meaning
1.8 express opinions about the ideas and information in texts and cite evidence from the text to support their opinions

3.4 produce some short media texts for specific purposes and audiences using a few simple media forms and appropriate conventions and techniques