Session plans to control children’s anger effectively

This anger management program draws on research about the development of emotional and social intelligence which indicates that a well-balanced and emotionally mature individual will be capable of greater academic achievement since they are not psychologically involved with inner tensions and emotional turmoil.

To achieve emotional maturity this program teaches:

• Self-awareness
• Self-management
• Impulse control
• Active listening
• Empathy
• Ability to understand non-verbal cues
• Stress management
• Conflict resolution
• Mediation
• Optimistic outlook
• Acceptance of other people

Central to the program is how to deal with angry outbursts – known as ‘emotional hijacks’ – when the brain floods with chemicals and all rational thought becomes impossible. It includes ‘pre-emotional hijacks’ where biochemicals such as adrenaline and flight-or-fight hormones start to kick in, right through to the ‘post-emotional hijacks’.

This resource is broken down into eleven session plans:

1. Feeling words – Focuses on the many words that describe feelings.
2. Feelings focus – Understanding that there are six basic feelings: anger, sadness, happiness, fear, surprise, disgust.
3. Different kinds of anger – Identifying different words that describe anger and putting them on an intensity scale.
4. What I get angry about – Identifying situations, people or physiological conditions that trigger anger and look at ways to respond to them.
5. What I can do when my anger is building up – Gives pupils a range of options to use when they feel angry.
6. When I talk to myself – Teaches stress management, how to soothe, relax and calm themselves with self-talk.
7. Melt Down 1 – Describes how people feel when they experience an emotional hijack.
8. Melt Down 2 – Learning ways to stop the anger exploding.
9. After the Storm – Understanding what happens after an emotional hijack and learning empathy.
10. Making ‘I’ Statements – Learning how to repair damage after an emotional hijack.
11. Rules for Myself – Helps students to work out their own rules for behavior when they have an emotional hijack and evaluate what they have learnt about anger management.

Each session plan details the aim, resources required, method, time to allocate and is accompanied by reproducible student and teacher sheets.

Ages 5-11