Our Classroom: Learning About Empathy

Our Classroom: Learning about Empathy is aimed at children aged 7 – 10 in school years 2 – 4. It is an interactive whiteboard activity to be used in the classroom, intended to aid students to learn about empathy.

The interactive whiteboard activity presents multiple different scenarios happening at various points throughout the day, which happen to different students and provide a situation in which empathy is needed. The scenarios present themselves with three different solutions, all of which are good solutions but to varying degrees. The students, in groups, order each solution from best to worst, then present their solutions to the class and discuss why they put each scenario in the order that they did.

We have also provided a teacher’s guide which aims to assist the teacher in how to direct the activity. The main aims of the activity are to help students understand and share the feelings of others through the scenarios presented, to teach students to prioritise action in response to various situations faced by students at school, to encourage working as a group, team discussion and rational thinking and to enable students to become more empathetic and aware of others’ feelings in real life situations.

The interactive whiteboard activity’s main aim is to create a class discussion about empathy and how the students can be more empathetic to each other.