Promoting Success: January 2017

Wednesday, January 18, 2017

How to Teach Students Empathy & Caring for Others

Empathy Activities and Games for Kids

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NOTE: Click HERE to find the following activities in a no prep printable packet.

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Activity 1: Defining Empathy

Instruct the students to draw four squares on their paper.

Square 1: Define the word.

Square 2: Use it in a sentence.

Square 3: Write synonyms for the word.

Square 4: Draw a picture to demonstrate the word.

Click HERE for the free printable vocabulary activity and rubric.

Activity 2: Perspective Taking

Instruct students to role-play some scenarios that require perspective taking.

Group 1: Role play a student missing a basket in the final seconds of the game.

Group 2: Role play a student not included in a recess game.

Group 3: Role play a student who was the only one who didn't pass the test.

Group 4: Role play a student who was preparing a speech to give in front of the whole school.

Group 5: Role play a student who fell and was injured at recess.

Activity 3: Points of View

Read "The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs" and the original version as well.

The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs

Divide the students into two groups. One group must take the point of the view of the wolf. The other group takes the point of view of the pigs. Students may have a debate modeling how to respect others' points of view or they may write a letter to the other group.

Activity 4: Listening to Others

Students may sit in a circle. Begin the game by having the first person whisper a sentence in the next person's ear. Players continue to repeat the sentence by whispering it in the next players ear. The game continues until the last player hears the sentence. The last play says the sentence out loud so everyone may see if the sentence changed.

Instruct students to brainstorm individually or in groups at lease ten ways to improve listening skills.

Activity 5: Being Different is Beautiful

Instruct students to create classroom posters by completing the sentence, "Being different is _________." Encourage the students to draw colorful pictures to go along with their sentences.

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Empathy Activities for Students

printable empathy activities and games for kids

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You may also like the following teaching resources from our Amazon Associate store:

The Idea Box Kids Caring: Acts of Kindness - Teaching Empathy - Learning Manners

Youthlight Acts of Kindness Thumball - 4 inch

Stand in My Shoes by Bob Sornson

Learning to Listing, Learning to Care: A Workbook to Help Kids Learn Self-Control and Empathy

What If Everybody Did That?

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Shelly Anton is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com. ** This means there are Amazon affiliate links in these blog posts. This does not mean you pay a dime more when you purchase a product through the link. It just means I am trying to save you valuable teacher time by making it easier for you to find valuable resources for your students, and I earn a few cents for my research and time. Thank you for all you do for kids!

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Goal Setting for Students

Note: This blog post contains resources from our TpT store and Amazon Associate store.

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Do you set goals with your students? The new year gives us opportunity to review our beginning of the school year goals, reflect on our accomplishments and revise as needed. Teachers have been trained to write their own SMART goals, and they are also very effective with students.

SMART

Specific

Measurable

Attainable or Actionable

Realistic and Relevant

Time Bound

Watch this one minute video describing each step of SMART goals.

And, of course, who doesn't need a pep talk by Kid President?

Here are a few goal writing tips for your classroom.

1. Make sure each goal has a VERB. Here are some action verbs to get you started: acquire, become, complete, demonstrate, execute, formulate, generate, improve, locate, obtain, recite, resolve and summarize.

2. Break larger goals down into doable parts. For example, "Achieve an A in math." This may be broken down into doable parts, such as, complete all homework, attend all review sessions, meet one-on-one with the teacher, etc.

3. Develop a timeline for the larger goal and for each smaller step.

4. Identify resource to help achieve the goal. Some goals require outside resources, such as experts in certain fields, tutors, peers, parents, etc.

5. Conduct on-going progress monitoring. Depending on the range of the goal, set daily, weekly or monthly dates to stop, collect data and reassess if needed.

6. Make the goals visible. This may be publicly or privately visible; however, goals that are tucked away in a file without review do not achieve the best results.

7. Brainstorm potential barriers or roadblocks. How will these obstacles be overcome? Who may help prevent or eliminate these barriers?

8. All goals are successful as long as some progress occurred. Goals are valuable even without perfection. If the goal wasn't made, would have any progress occurred?

You may also like these resources from our store:

Free Personal Reflection Activity for Students