To continue our unit on empathy, this week's lesson focused on looking at situations from other peoples' perspectives. We started our lesson with an activity where students had to draw an object from where they were sitting in the classroom; this was a silent activity. Once students had completed their drawings, we talked about how all of these drawings were or the same object, but they all looked different. Students offered several reasons why: the view was from different angles, students have different artistic abilities, and students were looking at the object from different points of view.
We talked about how students may have different feelings and perspectives about the same thing. We spent the rest of the lesson discussing a video of two students. In the video, we see two different perspectives: Lydia's perspective and Alexis' perspective. Both students want to get a drink from the water fountain. From Alexis' point of view, it looks like there isn't anyone in line. From Lydia's point of view, she believes that she is waiting in line. We looked at each student's perspective and talked about how they felt about the situation. We also talked about how each student may have felt or responded differently if they could see the other student's perspective. We ended our lesson talking about how taking others' perspectives can help us to have empathy for others and makes us better friends.
