1. I understand strong emotions and know about stress
Year 8 – Strong emotions
I understand strong emotions and know about stress
© Leeds South and East CCG

2. Learning outcomes Knowledge Skills
I can recognise anxiety, stress and stressful situations
I can further develop strategies to recognise and manage strong emotions and feelings such as stress and worry
I can complete the sentence I feel stressed or anxious when… and I can ask others what makes them stressed and listen empathically to the response 2

3. How we will work together
Can you remember the ground rules we have already talked about, let’s take a minute to think about them
Teacher notes
Read these through with the children. Hopefully the ground rules will be displayed in the classroom already. 3

4. What do we already know about strong emotions?
In Year 7 we learnt about strong emotions and looked at anger
We saw how anger can be useful or harmful depending on how we react to it
Today we are looking at other strong emotions: Anxiety and stress 4

5. What do you know about managing stress?
1 is very bad at and 5 is the best possible at.
When I feel stressed I know how to manage it
I know how to help other people when they are stressed
Circle the number which describes how much you know
Record on the handout and repeat at the end of the lesson as a plenary. 5

6. Let’s get started
Think about how you felt the day you started secondary school
How did they feel?
Did they tell you?
What was your biggest fear?
Had you heard any stories?
How many of the stories were true?
What were you worried about?
What did you think would happen?
Did you have any friends starting with you?
When you introduce this section explain that they can either do this from personal experience or by thinking of how it might be for someone else. Allow pupils a few minutes to reflect on these questions individually before coming together in groups of three or four. Give pupils five minutes to talk. Get each group to pick out any two key themes and feedback them back to the class. There is a handout with these questions on. 6

7. What are we talking about?
Stress is the feeling of being under too much mental or emotional pressure
Anxiety is a feeling of unease, worry or fear
A panic attack is a rush of intense worry and physical symptoms
NB The specialist lesson on MH conditions will explore panic in more depth. It is alluded to here but the real focus is on stress and anxiety. We all face pressures in our life and often it can help motivate us to achieve more. Without some pressure, Jessica Ennis couldn’t have won an Olympic Gold and Sam Smith wouldn’t have number one songs. Stress is different from pressure and can happen when this pressure becomes too much. It’s a perfectly natural reaction, but when you have too much stress it can have a negative effect – especially if it lasts a long time.
Anxiety is another form of stress – when your body starts reacting to a stressful situation or a worry in your mind.
Anxiety is really common and can happen for many reasons, such as exams or even a date. Sometimes it will go away quickly, but sometimes these feelings can develop into deeper anxiety or a panic attack – at this point, it’s a good idea to ask for some help.
Panic attacks can feel really scary, but they can’t cause you any physical harm and lots of people have them. You can find out more about dealing with them, plus other help and support available, below. 7

8. Which condition goes with which situation?
Stress
Thinking about the definitions on the previous slide ask pupils in pairs to decide as quickly as possible which condition goes with which situation.
Check no one has arachnophobia before showing all the images
Draw out that different people will have different responses to the situations and these will be of differing intensity
Panic
Anxiety 8

9. What do stress and anxiety feel like?
Read to class: From NHS choices
‘Stress can affect how you feel, think, behave and how your body works. In fact, common signs of stress include sleeping problems, sweating, loss of appetite and difficulty concentrating. You may feel anxious, irritable or low in self esteem, and you may have racing thoughts, worry constantly or go over things in your head. You may notice that you lose your temper more easily, drink more or act unreasonably. You may also experience headaches, muscle tension or pain, or dizziness’
Get pupils to name symptoms from the images.
Anxiety symptoms include
feeling worried or uneasy a lot of the time
having difficulty sleeping, which makes you feel tired
not being able to concentrate
being irritable
being extra alert
feeling on edge or not being able to relax
needing frequent reassurance from other people
feeling tearful 9

10. What does stress do to your mind and body?
Stress causes a surge of hormones in your body. These stress hormones are released to enable you to deal with pressures or threats –"fight or flight" 
Once the pressure or threat has passed, your stress hormone levels will usually return to normal. However, if you're constantly under stress, these hormones will remain in your body, leading to the symptoms of stress
The slide is self explanatory 10

11. Communicating to lessen stress?
In pairs read out the statements in turns
Then pick a response and see which ones help you to feel better and which ones don’t or even add to your stress
Pick your top 2 most helpful statements and say why
Talk partners
It is helpful to talk to alleviate stress. Hand out the stress statements work sheet and after allowing some brief discussion. Carry out questioning for assessment for learning as a whole class 11

12. Stressful situations Talk partners
Think of three situations where you might feel stressed or anxious
Now go around the room and find someone who has a different situation to you and write it down
Respond to them using one of the helpful statements we have just talked about
Talk partners
Write down some examples from the class and discuss with the class what it is about each situation that causes stress and anxiety. 12

13. Reducing stress by making the situation less stressful
Ask yourself ‘Can I do anything to make the stress less?’ Sometimes the answer might be no and sometimes yes.
Look at the five stressful situations below. Which ones can be avoided?
How could you lessen the stress.
Being late for school
Losing your dinner money
Forgetting your homework
Being bullied
Someone close to you dying
In groups
In groups the pupils look at the situations and pick out the ones which they can do something about. Then give each group a situation and get them to come up with four or five things they can do to improve the situation and thereby lessen the stress it causes.
This should spark some debate as being late can be your fault or not. Talk about the different approaches if for example the bus was late or you got up late. 13

14. What helps when you are stressed?
Share ideas for reducing feeling stressed or anxious
In Year 7 we talked about reducing anger
Do some of the ways cross over?
Create a list of things you think would work for you
In pairs
There are many ways that pupils can reduce stress from Mindfulness to planning ahead, from being more active to listening to music, from reducing caffeine to reframing negative thoughts to positive ones. It helps if the idea has come from the young person. When self-help isn’t enough then young people can get specialist help. This may often include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). CBT can help pupils understand and deal with the causes of their anxiety and to find strategies for coping. 14

15. How has our learning progressed?
1 is very bad at and 5 is the best possible at.
When I feel stressed I know how to manage it
I know how to help other people when they are stressed
Circle the number which describes how much you know
Record on a handout and repeat at the end of the lesson as a plenary. 15

16. Taking the learning away
Make a list of all the things in your life that are making you feel stressed– write them down on a piece of paper. Then take each one in turn and list all the things you could do to tackle it. You can also decide which are priorities
Take a break - do something that you really enjoy
Do something relaxing, for example take a hot bath or watch a film
Do some exercise. This produces chemicals in your body called ‘endorphins’ which make you feel good 16

17. Want to know more or get help?
im-a-young-person
get-support
Contact:
Call, or go online 12