Running Deer Emotional Curriculum

Introduction


At Running Deer we have identified a number of children and young people who have difficulty recognising, naming and regulating their own emotions, including children who are autistic. This has an impact on their behaviour, on their ability to complete school work, and on their wider lives outside school. 

According to research by City University London, Newcastle University and Brigham Young University (2016), people with autism are around five times more likely to develop anxiety disorders than people without autism. Their research has shown that high levels of anxiety in autism can be explained by people’s difficulties in identifying and understanding their own emotions. For this reason, we have developed a curriculum which teaches children and young people about emotions and supports the development of their understanding of their own emotions and those of the people around them. 

The Running Deer Emotional Curriculum operates as a spiral curriculum; an approach based on the theories of Jerome Bruner (1960) and recommended as one of the ‘ten principles of effective PSHE education’ (PSHE Association, 2018). Each stage of the curriculum revisits the basic principles before deepening learning further. Pupils can ‘dip in’ to the curriculum at any point after an initial needs assessment. 

 This Emotional Curriculum does not stand alone; at Running Deer, children are given opportunities to talk about their feelings and to discuss emotions throughout the other activities they take part in during the day. We recognise that sometimes children do not want to talk about themselves and their feelings at a specified time, so we make sure there are opportunities for informal discussion whenever necessary. 

The Running Deer Emotional Curriculum has been written with the central tenet of keeping children and young people safe. Staff working with the curriculum are aware that, when discussing sensitive issues, it is important to maintain the boundaries set out in the Running Deer Safeguarding Policy, as well as making sure that the children are aware that their wellbeing and safety is paramount.  

The Running Deer Emotional Curriculum


Curriculum Aims



  • To equip children and young people with the tools to identify and manage their own emotions 
  • To enable children and young people to express themselves in a safe and acceptable way 
  • To support children and young people to develop emotional resilience 


Outcomes

Stage 1: Emotions

  • To be able to name the most common emotions and to describe their effects on the body 
  • To know that emotions may feel bad or good, and to give examples of “useful” uncomfortable emotions 
  • To understand that everyone has emotions, whether they display them in an obvious way or not 


Stage 2: Relationships

  • To be able to identify common facial expressions and their associated emotion 
  • To be able to identify common body positions (body language) and their associated emotions, of both people and animals 
  • To understand our tone of voice and other non-verbal cues can indicate our emotions 
  • To develop an emotional connection to the natural environment 


Stage 3: Physiology

  • To understand factors that affect our emotions 
  • To identify their own actions associated with their emotions 
  • To understand the physical manifestation of emotions, e.g. fight or flight 
  • To understand that emotions do not occur in isolation 
  • To understand other people’s expectations of emotions and associated behaviour in given situations 


Stage 4: Managing Emotions

  • To understand the impact of emotions on behaviour, both of the person experiencing the emotions and on others witnessing the behaviour 
  • To identify their own emotional triggers 
  • To be able to anticipate their own emotions to given situations 
  • To build their own wellness toolkit 
  • To learn to maintain “wellness” 


Set Targets

Set SMART targets with the student at the beginning of each stage, to be reviewed at the end of the stage. These should be specific and relate to the aims of the stage of the Emotional Curriculum that the student is working on. There is a target setting proforma that can be filled in and put into the student’s folder. 

Example:
Area of need Needs to learn How to achieve this Review
Awareness of own emotions To name the most common emotions Work through the first 4 sessions of the Emotional Curriculum
Social awareness To understand that other people have feelings and emotions Support the student by pointing out when someone else is expressing emotions or when the student is causing a reaction in others

Baseline Activity

Support the student to create a mind map (or list) of all of the feeling words they know. This will be revisited throughout the Emotional Curriculum and added to. This forms part of Stage 1, Lesson 1, but will need to be completed if a student enters the curriculum at a different point.  

Introduce the “fuzzy felt face”. Students will use this to convey an emotion they are feeling (or might wish to talk about) at the beginning of each lesson. Again, this is also part of Lesson 1, but will need to be introduced wherever the student begins the curriculum.  

The 4 Stages of the Emotional Curriculum


Click on each stage to progress through the curriculum.

Stage 1

Emotions

Stage 2

Relationships

Stage 3

Physiology

Stage 4

Managing Emotions
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