Third Grade: Identifying Others' Feelings

This week we started a new unit on Empathy, feeling or understanding how someone else is feeling. We started our lesson by reviewing the skills for learning we have focused on and discussing why these skills for learning are still important to continue using even though our unit is finished. We warmed up our brains by playing a round of the Feelings Factory, where students have to show similar or different feelings than what I am showing using my face and body, but they have to listen for the words "Foreman Says." The rules are very similar to Simon Says. We talked about which skills for learning helped us to be successful: focusing attention, listening, and using self-talk.

We spent the remainder of the lesson talking about four students' pictures: Jenni, Meg, Brian, and Kyle. We used facial and body clues to determine how each of these students were feeling, and we agreed that they were all experiencing different feelings. We also talked about the importance of looking at the situation, or what is going on, for additional clues about how someone may be feeling. We watched a video clip of the four students that gave information about the situation, and we were able to decide that Jenni felt sad, embarrassed, and angry because Kyle had run into her and caused her to spill her milk. We also decided that Kyle felt amused by the situation because he laughed at Jenni. We talked about how the students had different feelings about the same situation. Next, we made predictions about how the situation would end between Jenni and Kyle.

Students had several solutions:

1. Kyle would get a paper towel and say sorry
2. Kyle would continue to laugh
3. Kyle would walk away and do nothing

We concluded the lesson by sharing our predictions with our partners and completing a worksheet on different scenarios where each partner had to share how they would feel, and students marked whether they had similar or different feelings.