Everyone loves a game of charades! Here’s how a simple game of charades can help to develop the understanding of the language of behaviour.

The only resources that this practice example requires is knowledge of some Emotion Words and a camera.

The Emotion Words that were used in this lesson are depression, delight, happiness, excellent, joy, anger, pain and sadness however, vocabulary can be adapted to suit the age and stage of the children involved.

Pupils pick a card and act out what a person might do with their bodies if they were experiencing that emotion. They may have to exaggerate their body language for the emotion to be evident. Pupils can record their charade using cameras or iPad’s and then print out and display on their Emotion Works display area. This will support pupils understanding of behaviours with images of real life examples.

To extend the activity,for upper stages, pupils could create a short movie clip for their peers. They would then show the clips to the class/group and select an emotion to match the behaviour being displayed.

Quality questions to ask – How do you know they are feeling (Emotion Word)? What did they do with their bodies? How can you tell?

Behaviours can be actions/inaction’s, gestures/movements, facial expressions (different parts of the face eyes, mouth) or verbalisations/noises.