Teaching Strategies
How does one teach empathy? First we must teach students to recognize their emotions and the emotions of others. 1 1 We can train children to recognize the emotions they are experiencing, starting with naming the feeling they are having. In order to recognize that emotion in others the children must see the visual cues so they can put a picture with the feeling name. Essentially there must be a picture and word vocabulary of feeling. Then once the vocabulary is developed the children can move into activities that will heighten their sensitivity toward the perspective of others.
These activities include:
1. Perspective taking
The child is given a situation and looks at it through the point of view of another.
2. Observing misfortune
The child views an instance of hardship in another person's life.
3. Writing and drawing
The children are presented with a situation of conflict and write and/or draw a solution to the problem.
Once the vocabulary of feelings and sensitivity toward others is established, the next step in fostering empathy is modeling behaviors. Modeling behaviors includes the teacher modeling empathetic reactions in situations as well as the students. The teacher must be cognizant of her reactions, words, and facial expressions when interacting with others. Children will emulate the behaviors of their teachers. 1 2 Role play or role taking is one vehicle for modeling behaviors. The child assumes the role of another person and act or reacts as he or she perceives the other person would in a given situation.
Vocabulary Development
In this unit the children will compile a word bank of emotion before we begin reading the biographies. We will begin by using our read aloud time to discover the emotional reactions we have to our stories. Using the same books I previously used, No, David! and Duck on a Bike, I will read aloud the text and stop during pivotal moments to have the children share their emotional reactions. When Duck first rides the bike he is wobbly, a little unsure of himself. The children may be scared for him. Once the feeling is identified we will document it by writing the word scared on a sentence strip and posting it on the wall in our word bank. Then I will ask the children to show me what scared looks like on their faces. I will document the visual cue for scared by taking a photograph of a child and posting it under the picture. The children could also draw a simple stick drawing of a circle with facial features to graphically represent the feeling "scared" if no camera is available. We will continue this process during read-aloud time throughout the year until we have a wide range of emotions in our word bank.
Each biography will have vocabulary to develop specific to its setting and subject matter. As the children read the biography they have chosen they will use the graphic organizer in appendix B to list the words they encounter that they do not know. The organizer is separated into columns labeled: people, places, actions, and things. After the first reading the children will work cooperatively in their reading interest groups to sort the words into those columns. As I meet with each reading interest group, before their second reading of the text, we will review their organizers and compile their words on a large chart of the organizer.
Grouping for Reading Interest
Before we begin the unit I will display copies of all the biographies in groups sorted by historical figure and ask the children to preview them in a museum tour format. I will design a viewing route around the room and demonstrate how I want the children to move through the tour route. Then I will arrange the children in groups of four and use a timer to signal their movement. At each group of biographies the children will have three minutes to look through the books to get a sense of the historical figure. Once the timer rings the groups will move through the tour route to the next set of books. This process will continue until all the children have previewed all the sets of books. Then the children will write their names and the names of the historical figure that they most want to learn about on an index card. I will collect the index cards and sort them into reading groups by interest. I will be able to fit each child to a text that he or she can read either instructionally or independently as I have collected a variety of texts at different readabilities for each historical figure. Children who need the most support reading will be placed into the group reading the Rookie Biography series. Partner reading or recording an oral reading of the biography to be set in a listening center are accommodations that can be put into place for students needing extra support.
During the 45-minute reading block I will model one reading strategy in a whole group setting using the biography Who Was Louis Armstrong? The children will gather on the reading rug and I will explicitly explain the reading comprehension strategy and its importance to understanding text. Then I will read a small section of the biography and demonstrate how to use the strategy. Of the seven proficient reader strategies I will focus on making connections, text to self, text to text, and text to world, predicting, determining important information, and making mental images during these lessons. 1 3 These reading strategies fit nicely with the strategies for developing empathy as they require children to make inferences about actions/reactions and connect themselves to the lives they are reading about in the text.
After meeting together for the model lesson the interest groups will meet together to read and discuss their texts. The members of each group will have the choice to partner read (whisper-read aloud together) or read independently while implementing the reading strategy modeled during the lesson. I will meet briefly with each group and "listen in" on their reading and discussion. At the designated stopping time (after 15 minutes of reading) the children will bookmark their books and discuss their connections, predictions, important information, or mental images with their partners and their groups. The whole group will come back together on the reading rug to debrief. Each day one group will share what they have learned. We will continue this process, focusing on one reading strategy each week until the biographies have been read and reread. This will take place over two weeks during the reading block.
Writing and Drawing in Response to Reading
In our National Initiative seminar we responded to our reading by listing our thoughts in a two column format with one column titled "observe" and the other titled "infer". We had rich discussions linking what we observed when reading different forms of narrative text with the inferences we made about the characters and how we perceived them. I adapted this format to make the reading response become a perspective-taking exercise. The students will answer the reading response questions from the perspective of the biographical figure they are reading about in their interest groups. I have included the reading response questions in appendix C.
Using a writing workshop format of mini-lesson, writing/conferencing, and sharing I will pose questions to the children, teach a structure for the response, and model how to respond to the question. 1 4 The children will write their responses as they relate to their biography reading. I will conference with different groups of children as they are writing. Then the group of children with whom I conferred that day will share their reading responses. The children will share their reading responses aloud in front of the class, taking the role of the biographical figure through a dramatic reading. The audience will praise their work and ask clarifying questions to help guide any needed revisions.
Through writing and drawing we will develop a graphic representation of the time period of the people we are reading about in the form of a timeline. The timeline will show the years 1590 to present. The children will draw and label the significant events they are reading about and place them on the timeline. The timeline will help the children see any spaces between or overlaps in the years the figures were living.
Character Analysis
Using the writing workshop format I will guide students in the writing of a character analysis and text summary. 1 5 Using the character toolbox we built in our Yale National Initiative seminar sessions, the children will make inferences about the subject of their biography when they reread. They will use the graphic organizer in appendix D to compile and organize textual information to write and illustrate a character analysis. Once the character analysis is completed each child will write a summary of the biography they read using the format in appendix E. One week of the daily forty-minute writing block will be devoted to learning how to write a reading response, a second week will be devoted to writing a character analysis, and the third week we will write summaries.
Visualization through Drama
We will use drama in the form of role play and role taking both to demonstrate reading comprehension and to foster empathy building. The children will dress, speak, act, and try to react as the biographical figure they have studied. Role taking will allow my students to implement what they have learned and inferred about a biographical figure in a way that will fully engage all of their senses. Upon completion of the unit the children will perform in a "living wax museum" format for parents and peers. The children will be encouraged to dress in the style of the subject of their study. Each child will be stationed around the classroom in a still pose. At their feet we will station a sentence strip with a drawing of a switch. Next to the switch we will write: Please step here to learn more about (name of the figure). An audience of parents and peers will move about the classroom and turn on the switch that animates the figure. The child will come to life and share their summary in character. Imagine the excitement of "becoming" a famous person for a short time and sharing their learning about the two components of empathy with others in this way!
Independent Reading
Through the writing workshop sharing process of reading aloud, celebrating the writing, and providing peer feedback each child will be exposed to information about all four historical figures. 1 6 This will build their background knowledge and make challenging text more accessible. After the children have read one biography the books will be grouped together by subject and added to the independent reading choices baskets. The children can then choose to read a biography about any or all of the historical figures during their independent reading times.
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