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### Aligned Lesson Plan: "Feelings with Words"

### Learning Objectives:

- RULER Skill: Recognizing — Students will begin to recognize basic emotions in themselves and others.

- RULER Skill: Labeling — Students will associate sight words with emotions, building their emotional vocabulary.

- RULER Skill: Expressing — Students will practice using sight words to express their current feelings in simple sentences.

- RULER Skill: Regulating — Students will learn a basic breathing technique to help them manage emotions, especially when feeling strong emotions like anger or sadness.

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### Step-by-Step Instructions with RULER Integration:

1. Introduction (5 minutes):

- Recognizing: Begin by introducing emoji cards with basic emotions (happy, sad, mad) and asking students to identify the expressions they see. This supports recognizing emotions visually and physically.

- Understanding: Ask questions like, “When do you feel happy?” or “What makes you feel mad?” to help students understand the causes of these emotions.

2. Introduce Sight Words (5 minutes):

- Labeling: Show flashcards for the sight words ("I," "am," "happy," "sad," "mad") and repeat each word with students. Connect each sight word to the corresponding emoji card or expression. This step strengthens labeling skills by associating words with emotions.

3. Guided Activity - "I Am Feeling..." (10 minutes):

- Expressing: Model simple sentences like "I am happy" while holding the corresponding sight words. Invite students to create sentences expressing how they feel, such as "I am mad" or "I am sad." Encourage them to use facial expressions to express each feeling.

- Labeling & Expressing: Students will reinforce labeling and expressing by using sight words to verbalize their emotions in sentences and through facial expressions.

4. Breathing Technique - "Calm Butterfly" (5 minutes):

- Regulating: Guide students through a simple breathing exercise called “Calm Butterfly.” This gives them a foundational regulation strategy to calm down when experiencing intense emotions. Explain that taking a deep breath can help when they feel “big” emotions, like feeling very mad or very sad.

5. Reflect and Wrap-Up (5 minutes):

- Recognizing & Labeling: During the reflection, ask students, "How are you feeling now?" and encourage them to answer using the sight words they learned, reinforcing recognizing and labeling.

- Understanding: Reinforce understanding by asking questions like, “Did the breathing make you feel different? How?”

- Expressing: Close with a check-in where students express their feelings through thumbs-up/thumbs-down or simple words.

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### Implementation Tips for Strengthening RULER Skills:

- Recognizing: Use mirror activities (or encourage at-home mirror practice) to help students see their facial expressions, which builds their self-awareness in recognizing emotions.

- Understanding: During storytime or circle time, explore how and why characters feel certain emotions to deepen students' understanding of emotional triggers.

- Labeling: Create a visible “emotion word wall” with the sight words "happy," "sad," and "mad" (adding more over time) so students can refer to it whenever they discuss feelings.

- Expressing: Encourage students to use their new emotion words and sentence structures during daily classroom activities, such as group play or snack time, fostering a safe space for emotional expression.

- Regulating: Set up a calm-down area in the classroom where students can practice the “Calm Butterfly” breathing exercise if they feel overwhelmed. This helps students generalize the regulation skill for real-time use.

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### Parent Extension Ideas for Reinforcing RULER at Home:

Share simple strategies with parents, like the “Feeling Check-In” or “Calm Butterfly” breathing, so they can reinforce recognizing, labeling, expressing, and regulating at home. Encourage them to discuss daily emotions with their child, using sentences like “I am happy” to label feelings and making the RULER skills part of everyday life.

This alignment with RULER skills helps students build foundational SEL abilities as they practice sight words, setting the stage for deeper emotional intelligence and literacy as they progress in school.