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Unit Community-Building for Middle School Classrooms
Lesson Name What Is Empathy?
Grade Band Middle School (6-8)
Required Materials

Day 1: 

  • Device to show a video to the class

Day 2: 

  • Copies of game board on p. 1 (one for each student) 

  • Copies of situation cards on p. 2 – 8 (one for each group)

  • Scissors for students

Day 3:

  • One copy of the worksheet for each student.

Day 4 and 5:

  • Art supplies at teacher discretion – can include, but not limited to:

  • Clay/playdough

  • Colored pencils

  • Crayons

  • Drawing paper

  • Glue/glue sticks

  • Legos

  • Magazines

  • Markers

  • Paint

  • Scissors

  • One copy of the directions for each student

  • One copy of the sample interview questions for each student

Day 6:

  • One copy of the directions for each student or project the directions

Day 7:

  • Chart Paper (Optional)
Standards / Competencies

SEL Core Competencies: 

  • Self-Awareness: identifying emotions, experiencing self-efficacy, linking feelings, values and thoughts, demonstrating honesty and integrity 

  • Self-Management: managing one’s emotions, exhibiting self-discipline 

  • Social Awareness: taking others’ perspectives, recognizing strengths in others, demonstrating empathy and compassion, identifying diverse social norms, showing concern for the feelings of others 

  • Relationship Skills: communicating effectively, developing positive relationships, showing leadership in groups, resolving conflicts constructively, seeking or offering support when needed 

ELA Standards: Listening and Speaking, Writing, Reading 

Social Studies Theme: Individual Development and Identity 
Recommended Time 7 days, 45 mins per day 
Essential Question How can we show empathy to others? 
Learning Objectives

Students will be able to define empathy.

Students will be able to explain what it means to have different perspectives.
Activating Prior Knowledge

Show this Video Clip from the movie Inside Out. Ask your students the following questions:

  • Why is Bing Bong (elephant) sad?

  • How does Joy react to Bing Bong being sad?

  • How does Sadness react to Bing Bong being sad?

  • Who do you think did a better job of helping Bing Bong – Joy or Sadness?  Why?

Define empathy for your students: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

Ask your students:

  • Which character showed empathy towards Bing Bong?

  • What did that character do to show empathy?
Core Instruction

Do one activity with your class each day.  The activities can be done in any order except for the closing activity, which will be done last. Directions for each activity are included in the links. 

  • Day 2: Empathy Spell Out Game: Students break into groups and share empathetic responses to different scenarios written on cards. The first person in the group to collect cards with all the letters in the word EMPATHY wins. 

  • Day 3: Writing About Empathy: Students individually write responses to scenarios and analyze quotes about empathy.

  • Days 4 and 5: Empathy Art Activity: Students will conduct empathy interviews with a person of their choice and tell their story through an art project.

  • Day 6: Empathy and Religious/Not Religious Identity: Students will break into groups of four.  Each person will have a chance to tell a story related to their religious/non-religious identity.  The other three participants listen and respond to that story in a specific way.

Wrap-up

Day 7:

  • Write on the board or on chart paper: Empathy in Our Classroom

  • Ask the students how we as a connected classroom community will demonstrate empathy. -Write a list of their responses.

  • Save the list to post in the classroom.
Learning Beyond Classroom Walls Using this Bingo game, students can apply what they learned about empathy to practice real life empathy related activities in their class, school, and home communities. Students can achieve Bingo when they complete a row of 4-5 activities (depending on if the free space is used) vertically, horizontally, or diagonally.
Supplementary Resources

  • Franzese, Paula A. “The power of empathy in the classroom.”  Seton Hall L. Rev. 47 (2016): 693.

Instructional Content Adaptations 

Mini Lesson (20 mins):

Spot the Emotion: Part of being empathetic is being able to read facial expressions and body language.  In this activity, students will look at pictures of people/watch videos and answer the following questions:

  • What emotion is the person/people feeling?

  • What physical cues led you to that conclusion?

  • What could you do or say if you were a friend of the person/people?

Teachable Moment (5 mins):

Discuss with your students this list of strategies to build empathy. 

Diverse Learning Profiles

  • Students who have reading needs/dyslexia: Allow students to access the directions for the activities using a text to speech program such as Google Read and Write.

  • Students who have written expression needs: Allow students to dictate or listen back to their written response answers using a speech to text and text to speech program such as Google Read and Write.  Allow use of word processing tools for written responses. 

  • Students with executive functioning needs: For activities that have multiple pages, such as Writing About Empathy, give students one page at a time or reduce the amount of work required. The Empathy Spell Out Game could be overwhelming for some learners as it contains many parts.  Empathy Scenarios Spin Game is an alternative that serves the same purpose but is less visually overwhelming. 

  • Students who require visual supports and direct adult guidance: Work with your students to complete this scavenger hunt where they see or complete acts of empathy and kindness around the school. 

  • Students with hearing impairments: Turn on closed captioning for the videos.

  • Students with visual impairments:  Increase the font size of the activities or allow students to use their personal visual aids. 

  • English Language Learners: Provide materials in applicable languages or simplify the language using a website such as Rewordify.com.

  • Gifted Learners:  Empathy in Your Classroom Teachers Guild.pdf (oakland.edu) contains a great list of extension activities to delve deeper into empathy.