Empathy Lesson: The Invisible Boy

This was a great book to help the students understand Empathy, and I highly recommend it among many other topics that it can go along with.

I begin by explaining and having a discussions of what Empathy is (standing is someone else's shoes, try to understand how they feel).  Can we ever feel exactly what someone else feels?  Why/Why not?  (we aren't them)

Lesson Questions:

Pg. 5:  What does Brian want?  (to make friends, to get picked).
Pg. 7:  How do you think Brian feels? (sad, lonely, ignored)
Pg. 9:  What is the difference in this picture? (Brian is gray and kids are in color)
Why do you think he is drawn like that?
Pg. 11:  Take a look at the picture where Brian has drawn the superhero.  (Ask again)  What is it that Brian wants?
Pg. 13:  How would you feel if you were the new student and others were trying to decide if you were cool or not?  Is that very nice?  What do you think Brian is thinking?
Pg. 15:  AHHH, could Brian have empathy for Justin?  How?
Pg. 18:  What do you notice that is happening to Brian in this picture?  (getting color)
If he is getting color instead of gray, how do you think he feels?  Why?
Pg. 20:  Uh-Oh, how does Brian feel now?
Pg. 24-25:  What do you think Brian is feeling now that he has worked with his two friends?
Pg. 26:  How does Brian look like he feels?

Watch for student reactions while reading the story and catch them feeling empathy for the characters.  Challenge the students to notice when they feel empathy for another person.

**I have found that this lesson takes a good 20-25 minutes if you are discussing what is happening in the story as you read.  It generates great questions and responses from the students.

Empathy Lesson

This has to be the most influential, positive discussion, student engaging movie clip I have found that has to do with empathy and several other topics (friendship, kindness, accepting others, and etc.).

I start out by discussing with the class what empathy is (standing in someone else's shoes, trying to understand another's feelings).  I also ask the class "Can we ever really understand what another person is going through? Why or why not?"

Then, I ask the class if anyone speaks Spanish and if any of those students started school not understanding any English.  I tell the class that this is their chance to understand what it may have been like for those students who don't understand English, because the entire video is in Spanish.

I tell the class to be watching for things that are happening, emotions, actions, and etc. because it can tell us a lot, even though we cannot understand what is being said.





I pause the movie right when Maria finds out about the boy being sick so that the students can observe the sorrow.

Questions to ask the class:
How did Maria have empathy for the boy?
Are there other people that showed empathy towards the boy?  Maria?

I turn to the paused movie and ask the class:
What is Maria feeling?
In what ways might we not be able to understand how she feels?
How can we have empathy for Maria right now?

After discussing the movie, I turn to the students who don't speak Spanish and ask them how they felt if they weren't able to understand what was being said.  Most answers are; confused, frustrated, weird, and etc.  I then ask, do you have some empathy now for our students that come to our school who do not speak English.

This lesson is interesting to watch the kids' reactions and can be very engaging for them to really understand what it means to have empathy.

Differences

A couple of years ago, I wanted a very creative way to explain differences with an actual activity.  I used Todd Parr's book It's Okay to Be Different. 

I just talk to them a little bit about differences, read the story, discuss the story, and then explain to the kids that Todd Parr is the author of this book and he loves to be different. I tell them "You are now going to draw Todd Parr!"


Explain to the kids that they must follow my instructions and draw exactly what I tell them and when. I tell them to not jump ahead because I want all of them to look the same.

Have the kids do the following:

1. Pick your favorite color of crayon (or colored pencil).
2. Draw a circle for the head.
3. Draw a mouth that is shaped like a bowl.
4. Add a tooth.
5. Draw Todd's eyes, nose, ears.
6. Add some hair
7. Draw his shirt and make it with stripes, because he likes stripes.
8. Add his legs, feet, and hands.
9. Now take 2 minutes and share with your neighbor and compare.
10. Take 2 minutes and compare your Todd's with the rest of your table.

Ask:

1. Whats the same?
2. What's different? (When they start telling you all the differences, act shocked that they are different because you explained to them to do exactly what you said and all the pictures should look the same).

I love this part of the discussion.  The kids will then start catching on and get a little defensive by saying, we are all different, our favorite colors are going to be different, or what I think a mouth looks like maybe he/she wont draw the same one. I try and get them to think about all different aspects of their pictures, color, size, stripes, shoes/no shoes, fingers, toes, and even hair.  Allow for several other answers or responses, if time allows.

This gets their little brains thinking about all the differences and that we aren't always going to think or do the same things.

Diversity / Tolerance: Name Calling / Teasing

I had a student in my office not too long ago saying that other students have been doing some name calling based on their color of skin and ethnic background. I decided to make a lesson out of this since this wasn't the first time I had heard things like this happening. Before I started the lesson, explained to the students that there has been some problems with name calling, teasing, and other things because of students' beliefs, the way they look, the things they have/don't have and etc. I also explained that it isn't tolerated here at school.

For grades 3-6th:

Discuss what it means to "think outside the box."

Handout the Connect the Dots brain buster (page 3 &4). Give the instructions and give then them a clue; "Think outside the box." I gave them about 3 minutes to attempt the problem. After time was up, show them how to complete the problem. Discuss with them the way to solve the problem, you have to think "outside" the box.

Next, show them a picture of the Herman Grid. Ask the students to describe what they see. Let them shout out guesses until someone says they see dots. Explain that at first, we only see the lines and the rectangles. Ask: Are the gray dots really there? The longer we look at something, the more we can see. Relate this to having first impressions. Ask the following:

How can we relate this grid to people?
Have you ever had the wrong impression of someone?
Has someone ever had the wrong impression of you?

Next, read, show, and/or discuss the pictures in the book "Don't Laugh At Me" by Steve Seskin and Allen Shamblin. (For grades K-2, I explained the problem in the school, read the story and discussed every page, then had the students to draw a picture of what makes them different from others. While they were doing their assignment, I played the CD that comes along with the book, "Don't Laugh At Me." There is two songs, the first is with lyrics and the second is the acoustic version).

Challenge the students to be "thinking outside the box" when they are looking at the pictures. Show the pictures and let the students tell what is happening in each picture. Explain to them that his requires them to look beyond the obvious things we can see.

The classroom discussion was very interesting. I made sure to have the students were looking past the physical differences. For example, the first picture "the one they call a geek," the students noticed he was wearing glasses, but as I let the students keep telling what they see, eventually they noticed that he could be "smart" and could be made fun of because of that, too!

One other point worth mentioning was page about "hey aren't we all?" I made the point that I was taller than most of them, so that makes me tall. However, I was shorter than the teacher, which makes me short. Therefore, I am both TALL and short! That really helped them see the bigger picture!

Overall, this lesson turned out really well and the kids were really able to make the connections I was aiming for.

The Band-Aid Chicken

Can I just say, I LOVE THIS BOOK! I found it to be very accepted from Kindergarten up to 6th grade.

This book covers a lot of topics; accepting others, bullying, courage, bravery, standing up to others, peer pressure, and self-esteem. I am sure there are many other topics that you could pull out of this story as well.

I used this book with my students as sort of a review from the lessons I had taught over the year. Mainly, I used it to address bullying. Last year, I taught my students Bully Prevention In Positive Behavior Support (found here). With this program, students were supposed to use a "stop" signal with their hand as they are saying "stop." I started getting feedback from students about this program and that it wasn't working. Come to find out, students weren't taking it seriously and it was becoming a joke. Students would be using the hand signal inappropriately, which caused more problems.

After every page I read, I would stop and ask the class which lesson it related to. This was a great way to "test" them to see how much they remembered. I emphasized the parts where it related to the bully lesson I taught before. The Band-aid Chicken told them to "STOP" and the other chickens took her seriously and they STOPPED.

After discussing the story and pointing out a few things worth mentioning, I had the students draw the Band-aid Chicken and provided a band-aid for them to put it on their drawing (grades 1-3).

I was able to get this lesson idea from Debra Wosnik.