In first grade we have been talking about kindness and how when we do kind things for others, we leave "heartprints" behind. In continuing with these lessons we started to about empathy. Empathy is such an important character trait that allows us to help others. We started by reading "Stand in My Shoes" by Bob Sorenson. In this book we met Emily, a young girl that is learning about empathy. Throughout her day she tries to "put herself in other people's shoes". She learns that this means to think of how that person might feel and then think about what she can do to help. After that we looked at 3 pairs of shoes and we learned about what the people that are wearing them are experiencing. Here are the three people that that the students learned about:
Jill- A second grader that gets bullied on the bus for what she wears, and she always sits alone.
Mrs. Jones-A teacher that has to move her supplies to another classroom each day to teach and her hands are always fill and she is in a rush.
Joey- A first grader who never gets picked for soccer and always swings by himself during recess.
After we talked about these three scenarios the students then picked one and made an empathy comic strip. They decided how that person was feeling, what they could do to help, and how they would feel after having empathy for someone in need.
