Teaching Tool - Knowing When to Seek Help - Healthy Choices to Support Mental Health (Grade 2)

The purpose of these resources is to help students understand how to identify different feelings and know how to ask for help. The resources listed provide information, lessons and activities for educators to help inform and guide students on seeking support and promoting positive mental health.

Learning goals

  • I will learn and identify different feelings and know how to name them
  • I will understand when to ask for help and who I can ask

Core knowledge content

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

Ontario curriculum expectations

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

  • D2.5 explains how understanding and being able to name their feelings can help in knowing when they might need to get help. This specific expectation is also connected with the social emotional learning expectations A1.2 Coping, 1.3 Motivation and 1.5 Self.

Supplementary resources

  • Identifying feelings and help-seeking: This lesson plan allows students to think about the different types of feelings that they might have experienced. To start the lesson, the teacher will show six flashcards with faces (angry, embarrassed, worried, excited, surprised, and sad). The students need to identify what feeling each is showing and answer whether they have felt any of these feelings before. For the main activity, students will be given eight different situations that they will read and then will have to figure out which emotion matches it.
  • Supporting minds: This document provides specific strategies for teachers to use that supports and promotes mental health in the classroom.
  • Identification and management of emotions: This resource is broken down into categories of gauging, recognizing and understanding. Under each category, there are lessons that relate to the topic. Each category can help students have a better understanding of emotions and support.

Virtual learning

  • Vent it baseball: This is a game students can play to help relieve any stress through the format of virtual baseball.

Curriculum connections: Identifying feelings and help-seeking

Reading - Ontario Language Curriculum (2006)

  • 1.1 read a few different types of literary texts, graphic texts and informational texts
  • 1.4 demonstrate understanding of a text by retelling the story or restating information from the text, including the main idea
  • 1.6 extend understanding of texts by connecting the ideas in them to their knowledge, experience and insights, to other familiar texts, and the world around them
  • 1.8 express opinions about the ideas and information in texts and cite evidence from the text to support their opinions

Media literacy - Ontario Language Curriculum (2006)

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

Drama - Ontario Arts Curriculum (2009)

  • B1.2 demonstrate an understanding of the element of character by adopting thoughts, feelings, and gestures relevant to the role being played
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