This week we rolled out the Mood Meter, a component of the RULER social-emotional program. The mood meter is a great resource to use within our Responsive Classroom protocol. It provides an interactive way to facilitate and guide morning meetings, post lunch check ins and end of the day closing circles.
“RULER is an evidence-based approach for integrating social and emotional learning into schools, developed at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. RULER applies “hard science” to the teaching of what have historically been called “soft skills.” RULER teaches the skills of emotional intelligence — those associated with recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotion.”
The Mood Meter is designed to help students to recognize emotions, in themselves and others, and to develop strategies for regulating those emotions. It provides students with a “language” to talk about our feelings.
Each of the four quadrants represent a different set of feelings. Different feelings are grouped together on the Mood Meter based on their pleasantness and energy level.
Here is a video explaining the mood meter and how it’s used in school:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj6AIczvDhg
We encourage you to create your own Mood Meter at home to facilitate conversations about feelings and regulation. Here are some prompts that we use:
1.How are you feeling?
-What word best describes your feeling?
-Where are you on the mood meter?
2.What happened to make you feel this way?
3.How are you showing your feeling?
4.How do you want to feel? What are you doing to stay or shift?
-What strategy are you using?
YELLOW WORDS OF THE WEEK:
K- excited/ 1- energetic/ 2- interested/ 3- enthusiastic/ 4- engaged/ 5- elated