Bright Ideas – Mood Matters, Try This!

Use this trick to help you learn how much mood matters in the way your students behave and carry themselves in your classroom. Click through for more info!

We all have good days, we all have bad ones, and that is certainly true for your students. However, it is not always easy to pick up on the mood of every student in your class. Here is something fun and simple to try for a week or so to help you to be more in tune with how your students are feeling – and to help your students to do the same for each other.

Give each student (and yourself) a card that has a happy face on one side and a sad face on the other. Each student keeps his card visible on the corner of his desk. Each student selects which side to display, and she can change it at anytime. The happy face means that everything is pretty much okay…not perfect, but basically fine. The sad face means that something is not okay. Hopefully, most of the time, you will see happy faces, but when there is a sad face, depending on the student, you may want to:

Give the kid a break. Maybe today you just shouldn’t call on her.
Ask what is wrong.
Offer a few extra smiles, a hug, an encouraging word or two.
Make sure she has had enough to eat.

Often problems that are huge to a young person can be easily solved if they just express them, and the sad face can be a stepping stone for a shy or withdrawn child to do just that. Sometimes the problems are not so easily solved, but knowing about them can make a difference in how you interact with that child.

What could be more interesting is to see how your students react to a sad face on a classmate’s desk. You may be surprised at how caring and kind your students can be. And remember, you have a card too…because it’s good for kids to see that even teachers have hard days sometimes.I would love to know if you have done something similar or if you do try this, how it goes.