Equality and Human Rights Commission
Empathy
Scientists discovered empathy is a learned behavior, not an instinct or inherited behavior. The second lesson in a 12-part series focuses on teaching empathy, an important life skill. Scholars use discussion and role playing to practice...
Edutopia
Empathy
Teach your learners about support, respect, and listening skills with an activity about empathy. Class members set goals for themselves regarding their peer relationships, and monitor their own progress over a period of time.
International Boys' Schools Coalition
Empathy
Putting yourself in someone else's shoes is a common phrase we hear from time to time, but do children really understand? Explore empathy with elementary schoolers using these activities. Focusing on feelings and emotions, students role...
Learning for Justice
Showing Empathy
A short social-emotional learning instructional activity teaches high schoolers how to show empathy toward others. After completing a short survey that has them assess their understanding of empathy, the class learns specific behaviors...
Curated OER
Teach Peace Now
Help your learners discover empathy and understanding by investigating two sides of a situation. In this humanities lesson, pupils examine different pairs of shoes and hypothesize about who may have worn them. Discuss real life...
Curated OER
Valuing Different Views: Taking a Stand on Media Violence
Students recognize the value of multiple perspectives and differences of opinion. They build empathy and open-mindedness for other points of view. They study the complexity of social and cultural issues such as violence in media.
Curated OER
What's Missing? Making Room for Multiple Perspectives
Students identify missing characters from a text, particularly a school text. They increase critical thinking by supplying missing perspectives in a text an build empathy through surveying different points of view. They reflect on the...
Boys Town
More Tools for Teaching Social Skills in School
Put an end to wasted instructional time with this lesson on responsibility and preparedness. After completing this series of activities young scholars will learn the importance of these social skills not only in the classroom, but at...
Curated OER
Exploring Animals in Literature
Celebrate Be Kind to Animals Week while teaching empathy and allegory with creature-related texts
Humane Education Advocates Reaching Teachers
Justice for All - Educating Youth for Social Responsibility: Grades K-5
In grades kindergarten through fifth grade, scholars take part in a social-emotional learning unit designed to boost social responsibility. Three hundred pages provide lessons and activities related to everyday classroom practices, the...
Curated OER
Teaching Empathy : The Story of Ruby Bridges
Students explore "The Story of Ruby Bridges," by Robert Coles to uncover examples of courage in the lives of others and in themselves. This search into the story is meant to help students form connections with others and to foster the...
Read Works
Cool to Be Kind
Make a connection between empathy and bullying with a reading passage that has readers thinking about other people's feelings. After reading, learners respond to ten reading comprehension questions involving short answer and multiple...
Museum of Disability
Taking Down Syndrome to School
Teach your class about the ways they can befriend and understand people who are different from them with a reading comprehension lesson. As youngsters read Taking Down Syndrome to School by Jenna Glatzer, they answer a series of...
Film English
My Shoes
Engage your pupils in short story and short film. Using a still from the film as inspiration, pairs compose short stories, which they later share and compare with other members of the class. They then watch the film and respond to a...
Museum of Disability
Can You Hear a Rainbow?
Teach your class about compassion and empathy with Jamee Riggio Heelan's Can You Hear a Rainbow? As kids read about Chris, a boy who is deaf, they discuss the things he likes to do, as well as the ways he communicates with the world.
Guidance Group
101 Ways to Teach Children Social Skills
Increasing pressure to improve student achievement has made it easy to overlook the social skills they also need to develop. With this collection of worksheets and activities, you'll be able to improve children's communication, teamwork,...
Curated OER
Harmony Day - Driven Out
Children explore what life might be like for refugees and people migrating to a different country. Each student lists the five most precious items he/she owns and is then given an extreme scenario to consider. By the end of the exercise,...
Curated OER
Emotion Card Games
Emotions come in all shapes and sizes, and can be difficult for young learners or students with special needs to identify. Support them in gaining the valuable social skill of recognizing emotions and understanding empathy with this...
Museum of Disability
Stand in My Shoes
Stand in My Shoes, a story by Bob Sornson, is an effective way to teach young learners about empathy and making friends. Once pupils read through the story, they answer a series of discussion questions and complete reading activities...
Do2Learn
Social Play Action Figures
Three activities stem from one hands-on project designed to explore character traits. Scholars create an action figure that reflects their personality to teach others about themselves and role play conversational skills.
Ohio National Guard
Emotional Intelligence
Guide young learners through the tumultuous emotions of growing up with a set of worksheets about self-esteem and empathy. Each instructional activity focuses on a different skill, allowing youngsters to work through their feelings and...
Digital Public Library of America
Teaching Guide: Exploring To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, considered by many to be a seminal piece of American literature, contains many complex literary themes that carry through United States history. Use a series of discussion questions and classroom...
Museum of Disability
A Picture Book of Louis Braille
Teach kids about the beginnings of the Braille writing system with a lesson about Louis Braille. A series of discussion questions guide young readers though A Picture Book of Louis Braille by David A. Adler, and once they finish the...
Texas Education Agency (TEA)
Can’t We All Just Get Along? Conflict Resolution Strategies
Respond rather than react—that's the big idea behind a lesson on conflict resolution strategies. A richly detailed plan teaches high schoolers strategies for resolving conflicts. Pupils play charades, engage in verbal and non-verbal...