Case of the Hidden Emotions

This worksheet is designed for students in Grades 4, 5, and 6 to strengthen emotional intelligence, reading comprehension, and critical thinking by analyzing realistic social situations and identifying the emotions beneath them. By choosing the best-fit feeling and justifying their choice with evidence from each “case file,” learners practice inference, perspective-taking, and precise emotional vocabulary.

Learning Goals

• Identifying & Understanding Emotions (Grades 4-6) – Recognize emotions such as disappointment, embarrassment, worry, or frustration based on situational clues.
• Emotional Awareness & Regulation – Build insight into how emotions arise and how they might be managed.
• Reasoning with Textual Evidence – Cite specific details from each scenario to support an emotional inference.
• Inference & Justification – Explain why a particular emotion fits best, strengthening analytical thinking.

Instructional Benefits

• Teacher-Created Resource – Designed by educators to align with upper-elementary SEL, health, and ELA standards.
• Scenario-Based Learning – Realistic situations make abstract emotions concrete and relatable.
• Vocabulary for Feelings – Expands students’ language for describing complex emotions accurately.
• Empathy & Perspective-Taking – Encourages understanding of others’ experiences and reactions.
• Flexible Use – Ideal for counseling lessons, morning meetings, small groups, or independent reflection.
• Low-Prep Design – Easy to print and use in classroom or homeschool settings.

This printable worksheet helps students become more emotionally aware readers and communicators by teaching them to look beneath the surface of situations and identify hidden feelings. Through careful inference and explanation, learners strengthen empathy, self-awareness, and reasoning skills that support healthier relationships and more thoughtful conflict resolution.

This worksheet is part of our Conflict Resolution collection.