Emotional Learning
Everyone at the Learning Space understands the importance of building strong relationships within and between learners. Learners need to develop an awareness and understanding of their own emotions in a safe and supportive environment and an ability to express them in an appropriate way. Emotional literacy and self esteem underpin learning potential, so we have designed a new programme to help the students tap into their emotions to expand their learning potential.
During the sessions, students take part in a range of kinaesthetic activities, geared towards recognising, expressing and dealing with emotions. The day begins with warm ups and icebreakers to relax the students and get them thinking creatively, then they split into three groups and rotate around three workshops:
- 3D paper sculpture - students are shown how to make 3 basic shapes out of newspaper and masking tape. From these shapes, they are encouraged to make sculptures of things they like/don’t like. This gets the students investigating their feelings towards things in an disarming, easy-going and fun manner. The workshop offers the students the time to sit and share ideas, generating a lot of valuable discussion.
- 2Create a Story software - using the tablet PCs, the students create stories based on the theme ‘unluckily…luckily’. The aim of the workshop is to look at ways of turning negative experiences and thoughts into positive ones. Looking on life’s bright side!
- Music Therapy - a calm, safe and relaxed atmosphere is created for the students, in which they listen to different pieces of music. They are asked to consider how the music makes them feel, whether it reminds them of anything or makes them imagine something. Students are encouraged to write down words, or draw the images their minds eye comes up with and the emotions that are evoked. Each piece of music leads to a discussion in which the students share their thoughts and ideas inspired by the music.

Click here to download a copy of the Emotional Learning programme Impact Report.