Teaching emotional literacy

Abstract

Emotional literacy is an important skill that needs to be developed alongside traditional skills such as reading, writing and the new literacies of the 21st century such as computer, visual and social literacy. It is only very recently that the value of emotional education to academic achievement is being understood and accepted within the education systems. According to the author emotional education should begin in the early childhood years so as to be as effective as possible through partnership approach. The approaches to emotion education include verbal approaches, such as acknowledgement, empathy, questioning and discussion; proactive approaches such as modeling and taking action; and using arts to explore feelings and emotion expression. The author explores the importance of emotional literacy as the definition of literacy gradually expanded encompassing children who were having trouble regulating their negative feelings and are prolle to anger, frustration etc.