resources, inpsiration and training for Christian schoolswork
Easter Emotions
A lesson for Easter for KS3 (11-14 yr olds)
When telling stories, the bit that connects and engages our listeners most is emotion. We are wired to
feel things for people, so if we feel something for the people in a story, we are much more likely to want
to find out what happened and why it happened. This term let’s tell the story of Easter in schools. Let’s
help students explore what the characters in the story were going through, how they felt and why they
might have felt that way.
SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning) is an area of the curriculum that we should really be
aware of and able to input into. For more information on this see: http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.
gov.uk/inclusion/behaviourattendanceandseal/seal.
Here is an idea that uses SEAL principles in exploring the Easter story in an RE lesson.
3 Introducing emotion
Begin with a set of images that explore what different emotions look like. Before showing the pictures,
ask students how we recognise different feelings or emotions in others (facial expression, body
language, words, actions..). This section explores facial expressions and body language, and you will ask
the students to guess what the emotion is that is represented in the picture. You can do this by passing
round photographs, or projecting them onto the board. For a set of pictures see the resource toolkit on
schoolswork.co.uk. For the purpose of this lesson, it is important that through this activity you use these
feelings: EXCITED, ANXIOUS, SCARED, RELIEVED, PUZZLED, SAD, IN DESPAIR, REGRETFUL, AMAZED,
EXHILARATED.
3 Working with emotion
In groups of 3, students create a short mime sequence using the emotions listed above. Hand them a list
or write them up on the board. After they have created their mime, nominate one emotion per group
and ask them to freeze-frame the emotion they have been given to create a ‘still-tableau’.
These could be photographed and made into a resource for the class.
3 Exploring emotion
This section allows you to tell the Easter story through talking about events from the Holy Week. It is
based on the emotions you have already introduced to the students, and the emotions are those of Jesus’
disciples. There are various ways you could do this, but one idea is to tell each stage of the story and ask
the students to guess which emotion goes with each one.
Excited
When Jesus came into Jerusalem on the donkey, they crowds welcomed him as a
hero or Messiah, and the disciples may have felt excited.
Anxious
When Jesus turned the market traders out of the Temple court, the disciples may
have felt worried and anxious.
Scared
When Jesus predicted that he would be killed, then the disciples may have felt
frightened.
Relieved
When they sat down to enjoy supper and each other’s company, the disciples
may have felt relieved they were all together.
Puzzled
When Jesus shared bread and wine with them, they disciples may have felt
puzzled: what did it mean that the bread was his body and the wine was his
blood?
Sad
The disciples may have felt sad, or worse, when they ran away, leaving Jesus to
be arrested and tried by his enemies, or when they denied that they knew him.
In despair
When Jesus was crucified the disciples may have felt despair, as if their world was
falling apart.
Regretful
After his death, Jesus’ disciples may have felt regretful, that they had not done
more to stand by him or to help him.
Amazed
The disciples may have felt amazed when the tomb was discovered to be empty.
Exhilarated
The disciples may have felt exhilarated when they came to believe that Jesus had
risen from the dead.
3 Understanding emotion
After exploring how Jesus’ disciples felt along that journey, ask the students to reflect at the end of this
lesson, on the last time they felt anxious or puzzled or in despair or amazed. Encourage them to write
down one of the feelings from the lesson, and an example of when they felt this way.
This picture was drawn by 8 year old Paige, who
managed to show a huge amount of detail and
emotion in her picture. Using art is another way
of extending this lesson, encouraging students
to picture the different emotions you have
explored, particularly in response to hearing
the Easter story.
3 If you do have more than one lesson with the class, you may want to find some artwork that
represents these different emotions and illustrates the story in greater depth. You will find some
fantastic images in the pack ‘Picturing Easter’ available from REtoday (www.retoday.org.uk).
If you’re looking for Easter assembly ideas do check out the schoolswork website.
Resource brought to you by schoolswork.co.uk and RE Today.