The Ruler strategy can help teachers guide students to recognize emotions in oneself and others and to label emotions with accurate words by using the signature RULER tool, the Mood Meter. Students can place their name in the different color quadrants to recognize and label their emotions: Angry, Happy, Sad, and Calm. When arriving at the Friends Center, teachers, children, family members, and guests are welcomed by the Mood Meter, the signature RULER Anchor Tool, which guides children and adults through a check-in to identify how they are currently feeling. This exercise promotes emotion recognition and labeling skills.
Preschool RULER was developed at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence as a way to teach emotional intelligence to our youngest learners. This video provides a glance at how one of the RULER tools – the Mood Meter – is integrated in early childhood classrooms.
The Ruler strategy can help teachers guide students to express emotions differently depending on context and to understand the causes and consequences of emotions by modeling and discussing how to express emotions in healthy ways. Teachers may actively scaffold throughout the day labeling children’s emotions, talking with them why they feel this emotion, and how to express this emotion in different ways and find a solution to a problem. For example, if a child wants to play with a toy, instead of taking the toy from another child causing them to become sad or angry, the child can ask “Can I play too?” and both children can play together happily.
The Ruler strategy can help teachers guide students to regulate emotions with helpful strategies by embedding emotional intelligence in the curricula where social-emotional learning takes place throughout the school day in both formal and informal ways, including during small or large group time, read-alouds, music and movement, snack and meal times, and transitions between activities. When children know how to regulate their emotions, they are ready to learn. The Ruler strategy not only helps children self-regulate their emotions but also helps the adults caring and teaching the children to self-regulate their emotions too.
Check out the following link to see how the mood meter is used in the classroom and other evidence-based tools are used to support emotional intelligence: http://ei.yale.edu/ruler/the-anchor-tools/
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