Children in schools experience different emotions such as happiness, anger, and fear, which can positively or negatively affect their wellbeing and thus support or undermine learning experiences in school. For instance, positive feelings can foster children’s social engagement, creativity, and self-confidence, while negative feelings, can diminish their ability to function in learning situations. Tools to facilitate children’s communication of emotion and educators’ understanding of children’s emotions, can help to foster an inclusive and supportive learning environment. While emotion identification tools do exist, few provide a means for children to make marks outside of drawings.

Children’s emotions were explored using different geometrical and organic shapes to rate the intensity of children’s own emotions, associated with case scenarios experienced in a specific school situation by the student. Participants consisted of children aged 7-11 years old. Each child was given a template containing a list of emotions, for which the intensity ranged on a scale of 1-5 (1 least intense, 5 strongest). Children made marks (shapes) that represented each emotion’s intensity. Analysis involved creating visual representations consisting of clustered groupings of emotional intensity. The study highlights the value of art-based methods and mark-making to investigate children’s emotions, making it easier for them to express their inner worlds, which can then be further investigated. These methods can be implemented by educators to develop awareness of children ‘s own wellbeing and understanding by others, in classrooms and schools and to inform improvements in practice.

Keywords: Emotions, Emotion Intensity, Graphic Representation, Wellbeing, School.