Help students improve narrative writing with this clear and engaging tabletop student reference display focused on using emotions in stories.

This Writing Display teaches students how to show a character’s feelings instead of simply naming the emotion. Students are guided to use faces, body language, actions, thoughts, and words to make their stories more detailed, expressive, and interesting.

Students are guided to:
• Show emotions through facial expressions
• Describe body language and physical reactions
• Use actions to reveal feelings
• Add character thoughts
• Use dialogue to show emotion
• Choose stronger emotion vocabulary

This display is designed to sit neatly on desks or tables, acting as a constant reminder during story writing, narrative lessons, independent writing, small group work, and editing activities.

What’s included:
• 1 A4 portrait tabletop student reference display
• Clear five-part emotion writing toolkit
• Student-friendly examples for young writers
• Emotion word bank
• “Instead of / Try” model sentence
• Visual icons to support understanding

Writing strategies included:
• Face – show emotion through expressions
• Body – show emotion through posture and movement
• Actions – show emotion through what the character does
• Thoughts – show emotion through inner thinking
• Words – show emotion through dialogue

Why teachers love this:
• Helps students move beyond basic sentences
• Supports show-not-tell writing
• Builds stronger narrative detail
• Supports EAL learners with clear examples
• Useful during planning, drafting, and editing
• Perfect for writing tables, small groups, and independent work
• Clean, colourful, classroom-ready design

Grade Level

2nd Grade
3rd Grade
4th Grade

Subject Areas

English Language Arts
Creative Writing
Writing