Supporting Empathy: Elementary School Learners

For elementary school learners, there are a variety of activities with which you can engage to help support a child develop greater empathy. Read on to learn more about how you can incorporate empathy-related activities with your learners.

Thinking About Empathy (‘I’)

Media

Movies, cartoons, or TV shows that highlight empathy and compassion as central themes can be a great pathway toward developing empathy skills. For example, you might consider helping learners distinguish between sympathy and empathy using the following clip and then facilitate a discussion about the characters, their motivations, and the empathy they demonstrated or lacked in the story.

Another activity would be to invite learners to guess different emotions like anger, sadness, joy, fear, and disgust using this video from Inside Out.

A child-friendly version of Brené Brown’s earlier video is also a great teaching tool to help children learn about empathy. Take a look!

You can also help nurture children’s understanding that they can have significant impacts on their communities. DQ Institute’s (2015) video, [Ashoka] What is Empathy, shares some of the ways young people come to understand empathy and its impact on their sense of self.

Remember, when using media to explore empathy, the goal is to encourage learners to analyze media messages and explore the impact on their own empathy and understanding.

Picture Books

Picture books are also a great way to explore empathy, while also building early literacy skills. Click on the slides below to learn more about a variety of picture books you can incorporate into your read alouds.

Beyond picture books, consider selecting novels, short stories, poetry, etc., that also explore themes of empathy, compassion, and understanding. After reading, facilitate group discussions where children can share their thoughts, identify with characters, and discuss how they would have acted in similar situations. This activity promotes empathy through storytelling and critical thinking. Some of our favourite texts are shared in the slideshow below. Click through each slide to learn more.

Feeling Empathy (‘We’)

Dramatic Play

Dramatic play is still a very important activity for children in this age group. For example, you could write down various emotions on separate slips of paper and place them in a bowl. Have one child pick a slip and act out the emotion without speaking, while the others guess what it is. This activity helps children recognize and understand different emotions, fostering empathy towards others’ feelings.

Empathy Buddies

Empathy buddies or partners can be a great way to help expand learners’ empathy skills. In this activity, pair up children and assign them as empathy buddies or partners for a designated period. Encourage them to check in with each other regularly, listen actively, and provide support when needed. This activity promotes empathy, active listening, and building supportive relationships.

Perspective Taking

Start teaching children about accepting and understanding people who are different from them. Give them opportunities to learn how to perspective take and learn about what makes them unique individuals. Helping children learn that we can think and believe differently, but respectfully, is an important part of developing empathy. Perspective taking activities can become part of your drama or art activities, be paired with a read aloud, or stand alone as a deeper conversation during a sharing circle. A few of our favourite picture books that focus on perspective taking, or seeing the world differently, are provided in the slides below.

Reflective Writing

Writing or journaling is another great way for children to express themselves and foster empathy skills. Invite learners to write about their feelings in a structured or unstructured way. For example, write down sentence starters about feelings that they need to complete. You can also model these strategies by sharing your own writing with your learners. For example…

When I see a friend sad, I… 

I feel excited when… 

Something that makes me feel afraid is… 

I experience joy when… 

I feel proud when…

Practicing Empathy (‘Us’)

Community Building

A great way to practice empathy is through supporting learners’ local communities, including your classroom community. For example, reinforce prosocial skills like kindness, love, and empathy by encouraging random acts of kindness.

You can also encourage a sense of community, promote active listening, and build empathy by using a sharing circle on a daily basis. In a circle, learners take turns through the use of a talking piece and can share how they are feeling or pass when it is their turn.

Finally, learners can collect food which can then be donated to a community shelter, learn to be stewards of the earth by picking up garbage from around the school neighbourhood, and clothing drives can help support immigrant or refugee families. When teaching about activism, consider using the following video from Kid President as a jumping off point for different ways they can make a difference in their communities.

Changemaker Role Models

You can also share with them stories of young changemakers who can act as models for their own social change. We have provided examples below, but there are many others not represented here. Click through the following slides to learn more about strong youth role models.