Fifth Grade: Empathy and Respect

We started our lesson by listening to Phillip Phillip's "Home" song and discussing why it was chosen for the class.  I choose it to start off lessons for a number of reasons: to tell new students I want them to feel welcome, to let students know I want them to feel comfortable, to remind students about empathy and to stand up for bullying.

After we discussed the purpose of listening to "Home," we discussed my classroom expectations. You can see my classroom expectations here:

We spent the rest of the lesson discussing what empathy and respect are, and how they are related. We discussed the importance of having empathy for everyone, and how having empathy helps us to respond in a caring and respectful way to others. By having empathy (feeling or understanding how someone else is feeling) we are more likely to be kind and respectful to others. It helps us to be better students, better children, and better friends to others.