Pixar’s animated film Inside Out can be a teaching tool to help students understand and express their emotions. The website provides four marvelous activities for students of all ages and language levels. Playing the movie and doing one of the activities could be a multipart class or an English club session.
Here’s a quick summary from the Left Buddha Brain blog (link above), which also has posts on mindfulness that, although directed to parents of young children, are excellent ideas for TEFL teachers:
Inside Out is about 11-year-old Riley, who has to move with her family from Minnesota to San Francisco, which stirs up many emotions or feelings. These feelings live in Headquarters (inside Riley’s head); led by Joy, they work tirelessly to keep Riley safe and happy and healthy. All emotions are necessary, and by personifying emotions as colorful characters with distinct personalities, Inside Out makes abstract concepts concrete.
The post describes more of the movie and how to use the Inside Out website activities available here (http://www.bkfk.com/insideout/) and coloring pages with your students or English club. The activities include writing poetry, stories, and movie reviews as well as drawing murals.
Sarah Rudell Beach, the blog author, goes on to say:
“On a fundamental level, our emotions are a combination of thoughts and physical sensations that let us know that something important to our welfare is happening. Think about it — every time you feel nervous or sad or elated or angry or loving or guilty…. it’s because there has been some type of threat or reward to your physical, mental, or social wellbeing. Emotions prompt us to seek safety or avoid danger. We’d have a hard time living without them.
Inside Out teaches kids that they have certain core memories — the most important, happy, terrifying, and significant events that have happened to them. These core memories shape who they are and how they react to the things that happen to them.”
The activities can be modified for elementary, middle school, and high school students and may also be fun for adults, whom we can teach English and life skills at the same time.
Teach Like A PCV 