Invent a story and express emotions

Review the different emotions that will be addressed using the “Invent a story” file.

Print the materials for this activity...

Print, cut out and secretly distribute an emotion instruction to everyone (mixing or not the cards marked “level 1” and “level 2” allows you to adapt the difficulty of the task to the level of the students), after having numbered it (in the star). Ask them to keep their instructions secret (by telling them if necessary that this will serve as training for later learning a magic trick, which will require knowing how to keep it a secret).

Ask the students to write a story in which the main character will feel the emotion given to them, taking care not to name it in their text. Go through a phase of draft writing, individual correction then “clean” copy of the story on the lined A5 sheet (to be printed double-sided on itself, writing on the front the number of the instruction in the star and writing the title).

Give the students who have finished their text « a printout on thick paper (such as Bristol board) of the magician's table » which will serve as a ballot box, so that they can cut it out, complete it and assemble it. Make sure you have previously hollowed out the slot in the ballot box and the window on the back which will allow you to collect the “votes” with a cutter. « You can encourage those who finish first to help their slower classmates. »

Once everyone has finished their box, organize a time for individual readings of the texts followed by a vote. Give everyone a copy of the ballot sheet. « Ask them to cut them out and write their first name on the back. » Then let everyone read, in the order of their choice, « their classmates' texts », then vote by inserting in each ballot box the emotion or feeling which, according to them, emerges from the text.

When everyone has voted, proceed to “counting” (asking everyone to collect the ballots in their ballot box and sort them). Depending on the results obtained, « it may be helpful to reread certain texts as a class and discuss both whether the instruction was followed and the emotions assigned ». For older children, it is even possible to calculate the percentage of ballots corresponding to the targeted emotion, or « the percentage of emotions each person guessed correctly ».