How Emotions Feel in Your Body

Personal & Social DevelopmentEmotional LiteracyAges 7–9

Understand the connection between emotions and the body — recognising physical signals like butterflies in the stomach (nervous), clenched fists (angry), racing heart (scared or excited), and tight shoulders (stressed)

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Teaching Table

Set out your lesson

Discuss possible body signals without treating one sensation as a diagnosis.

Activity

Can discuss the supplied example in an accessible mode; adapt directions without supplying the target answer.

Policy

Check the learner can follow the model with support before moving on. Source prerequisite ordering is not learner mastery; return to prerequisite work when needed.

Offer only fictional examples unless the learner freely volunteers. Anyone may pass; do not measure pulse or provoke an emotion. Open S first, G together, then T alone; put S and G away before T. Keys stay adult-only. No purchase or printing is required; an unavailable physical observation remains pending, not passed.

Materials are ready in each step. Use them on screen or print just the current step. Put teaching examples aside before the learner tries.

What this lesson covers and its limits

These are bounded opportunities, not learner attainment. Partial and blocked source requirements remain so.

partial: Understand the connection between emotions and the body — recognising physical signals like butterflies in the stomach (nervous), clenched fists (angry), racing heart (scared or excited), and tight shoulders (stressed)
Own-body noticing and biological explanation of emotion physiology are not established; this is a non-diagnostic fictional interpretation exercise.
partial: Name at least three body sensations and match them to the emotions they signal
Own-body noticing and biological explanation of emotion physiology are not established; this is a non-diagnostic fictional interpretation exercise.
blocked: Notice a physical feeling in their own body and identify the emotion behind it
No required personal body report; own-body observation is optional and not collected.
blocked: Explain why the body reacts physically when we have strong emotions
Detailed nervous-system explanation not delivered; no medical inference from sensations.
partial: Before a school performance or sports day, can {{name}} notice and tell you about the physical feelings in their body — like butterflies in their tummy — and connect them to being nervous or excited?
Own-body noticing and biological explanation of emotion physiology are not established; this is a non-diagnostic fictional interpretation exercise.

Own-body noticing and biological explanation of emotion physiology are not established; this is a non-diagnostic fictional interpretation exercise.

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Discuss possible body signals without treating one sensation as a diagnosis.

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Check understanding

Name at least three body sensations and match them to the emotions they signal
Notice a physical feeling in their own body and identify the emotion behind it
Explain why the body reacts physically when we have strong emotions

“Before a school performance or sports day, can your child notice and tell you about the physical feelings in their body — like butterflies in their tummy — and connect them to being nervous or excited?”

Curriculum record

Type: Conceptual
Subject: Personal & Social Development
Domain: Emotional Literacy
Age range: Ages 7–9

Standards

ib-pyp-pspe:PSPE-ID-CU-P2-3