For our lesson this week, we discussed predicting feelings and how it relates to empathy. We started our lesson by having half of the students in the class while the others received instructions from me: to laugh when I said "Go!" and predict how their partners would react. After the activity, we talked about what students had done that had predicted correctly, and many of them had reflected on how their partner responds in other situations or based on the partner's personality.
We watched a video about a student named Lucas, whose cousin Aaron moves in with him because his mother is sick. The video shows that Lucas and Aaron have different hobbies and interests, and Lucas isn't thrilled about having the job of entertaining his cousin. In the first video clip, Lucas invites Aaron to play basketball at recess with him and his friends, but Aaron doesn't like basketball; he enjoys reading.
We talked about how Aaron felt about his new responsibility and how we could tell. We also talked about what Lucas did to help Aaron fit in, and if it was an activity that Aaron was interested in, which it wasn't. We talked about the importance of considering how others feel about a certain activity when we are making plans for them. This is known as predicting feelings. We also discussed how predicting feelings would have changed Lucas' actions: he probably would have realized that Aaron doesn't like basketball, and would have asked him to do something else that Aaron likes.
We finished up the lesson by talking about what Lucas could do to help himself predict feelings other things Lucas could do to help Aaron feel included in school. We concluded the lesson by watching the final video clip. This time, Lucas gave Aaron the option of playing basketball, but also offered to show him where students read in the library. By predicting Aaron's feelings, Lucas was able to have empathy for his friend and come up with a solution that Aaron would like.
This week's prezi link:
http://prezi.com/gnkc50ehzqjz/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share
