Identifying Emotional Perspective of Others1

Te Whāinga
This activity helps students to describe the body language of characters as portrayed in the illustrations of a
text. It also offers the opportunity to enrich students’ personal vocabulary to describe emotions.

Ngā Rautaki Whakaaro

Describing, labelling, inferring.

He Kupu Matua mō te Mahi

Whakamārama, kare-ā-roto, reo-ā-tinana, whakawhiti whakaaro, whakatau.

He Rauemi Tautoko
A copy of a narrative picture book.

Te Mahi
Students use the illustrations in a narrative storybook to identify and discuss the characters’ emotions from
their body language. Introduce this activity by starting with a well-known story that all the students are
familiar with and work through the process with the whole class or group before you have students work with
a partner or small group to apply this activity to another well-known story.

Te Ara Tohutohu
1. Discuss with students the purpose of this activity – to describe the body language of characters as
portrayed in the illustrations.
2. Shareanarrativepicturebookwithstudentsanddiscussthebodylanguageofcharactersasportrayedinthe
illustrations.
3. Identifythebodylanguageassociatedwithparticularemotionsandlabeltheseemotions.
4. Have students form pairs.
5. Askstudentstoidentifywhat‘signs’theylookforwhentheyassesstheemotionalperspective(sadness,joy,anger,
etc.) of others.
6. Havesomestudentssharetheirresponseswiththewholegroup.
7. Turn to some of the illustrations in the text and have students share with their partners how they think the
character/person is feeling and then discuss how they would react to that character/person.
8. Bringtheclassbacktogetheranddiscusswiththestudentshowreadingbodylanguageandidentifyingemotions
can improve their empathy and sensitivity to others’ feelings, including those of characters in a text.

1 Adapted from D. Whitehead (2001, p. 84).