📖 ReadingLevel 1Lesson 13
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Talking About Feelings in Stories

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Learning Objectives

  • 1Identify a character's feeling (happy, sad, or scared) using words and actions in the text
  • 2Recognize feeling clue words that signal an emotional state
  • 3Connect story events to the emotions they cause in characters
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Mini Lesson

Stories are full of feelings! Characters laugh, cry, worry, and celebrate. When you notice how a character feels, you connect with the story much more deeply. Writers show feelings in three main ways.

Three ways writers show feelings

  1. Feeling words — the writer names the emotion directly: "Lily felt so happy she jumped up and down."
  2. Body language — the character’s body shows the feeling: "He curled up in the corner, hugging his knees." (scared or sad)
  3. Actions — what the character does reveals how they feel: "She ran to her mom and wrapped her arms around her." (relieved or happy)

Happy clue words

  • smiled, laughed, jumped, cheered, beamed, excited, thrilled, grinned

Sad clue words

  • cried, sobbed, drooped, missed, alone, lonely, tears, upset, lost

Scared clue words

  • shook, trembled, hid, froze, gasped, heart pounded, ran away, dared not move
Six emotion faces — happy, sad, angry, scared, surprised, excitedSix circular faces in a grid, each showing a different emotion with eyes and mouth, and each labeled with the feeling word below.Six feelings in a storyhappysadangryscared!surprisedexcitedName the feeling you see
Six feelings you will meet again and again in stories.
Book page with a character and a thought bubble, plus a feeling word bankAn open book shows a character with a thought bubble. A word bank on the side lists happy, sad, worried, curious — with worried highlighted as the matching feeling.How does this character feel?She bither lipand waited.Hmm…Word bankhappysadworriedcurious← best matchMatch clue words to a feeling in the word bank
Read the clues in the story, then choose the best feeling word.
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Ask yourself: "What words and actions show me how this character feels?"

Vocabulary
Feeling
The emotion a character shows or describes in a storye.g. happy, sad, scared, excited, worried
Clue word
A word in the text that hints at how a character feelse.g. "smiled" signals happy, "trembled" signals scared
Body language
What the character's body does that reveals their emotione.g. curled up, hugging knees, wide eyes
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