Ashlee Conti

CNS 749/Sect BG
Assignment 4.2: Social Skills Lesson Plan
February 8, 2015
Title: Expressing Empathy
Grade: 6th
Standard, Competencies and Indicators:
ASCA Standards
PS:A2.6 use effective communications skills
PS:A2.7 know that communication involves speaking, listening, and nonverbal
behavior
PS:A2.8 learn how to make and keep friends
Lesson Objectives:
After completing the lesson, the learners will be better able to understand the
emotions that other people are expressing, and share in the feelings expressed by
others.
Assessment:
Check in with the students 1-2 weeks later by casually (and individually) asking
them how other students are feeling. Ask them why they think that the other
student may be feeling this way.
Key points:
Knowing that recognizing others' feelings makes them feel supported.
Thinking about situations through the "lens" of other people.
Thinking about how the student would want others to treat him/her if he/she
was in similar situations as those discussed.
Reinforce that students do not need to have experienced the
situation/feelings that others are experiencing, but just need to care about
how the other person is feeling.
Expressing empathy towards others may increase the student's positive
social interactions.
Materials:
Projector/Screen
3-4 one minute (+/-) video clips of individuals showing different feelings
3-4 short vignettes of scenarios of different expressed emotions
Opening: (3-5 minutes)
Ask the class if they have ever seen someone express strong emotions, and they
were unsure how to react. Did it make them feel uncomfortable? Define empathy.
Discuss how empathy is different than sympathy. Talk about how developing a
sense of empathy can help you to get a better sense of what others are feeling, and
how this may help you know how to react more appropriately.

Presentation of new material: (10 minutes)

Let the students know that empathy can help them make their friends feel
supported when they may be going through a rough time. Ask them how they
would like their friends to treat them if they were going through a troubled time.
Talk to the students about perspective taking. Discuss how empathy may work
most effectively if the student can name or come close to naming the emotion that
the other person is going through. Talk to the class about the importance of tone of
voice when it comes to displaying empathy. Emphasize that listening is important,
as well as genuineness. Give them some prompts to use that can help them show
empathy towards others when they are unsure of what to say: "I haven't
experienced what you have, but I can imagine..." or "This is what it sounds like
you're experiencing....".
Guided practice: (10 minutes)
Let the class know that you will be watching a couple of video clips from movies or
television where a character is going through some kind of emotional (whether it be
positive or negative) experience. Ask the class if they can identify the different
emotions, and how seeing those emotions made the students feel. Talk to the class
about how they would feel different if the emotional experience was happening to
someone they knew and were close with. Ask them what they would say if they
were interacting with the character in the video.
Independent practice: (15 minutes)
Have the students get into pairs, and provide each pair with several vignettes of
emotion-driven scenarios. One student should read the scenario, and the other can
try to offer an empathetic response. The pairs will switch roles for each scenario, so
that each student will have a chance to experience both roles. Tell the students to
think about what they would like another person to say to them if they were in
those situation.
Closing: (3 to 5 minutes)
We will all come back together as a class, and the students will be asked about their
experience. They can be asked if they felt comfortable with this experience or not.
Ask the group to name some other emotional scenarios, and what they think that
the appropriate response would be to a person going through that experience.
Evaluation: (10 minutes)
The students will be given a worksheet to fill out while doing the individual practice
activity. Questions from the worksheet will include:
What types of feelings was your partner expressing in the scenarios he/she
read?
What feelings did you experience when you were expressing empathy?
What feelings did you experience while your partner was expressing empathy
towards you?
How was your experience different when you had not experienced the
emotion expressed by your partner?
What reactions did you get from your partner when you expressed empathy
towards them?

Would you be open to expressing empathy towards others in your real life
now that you have practiced this skill?
Through the answers on the worksheet, the instructor can see if the students were
able to correctly identify feelings expressed, as well as whether the entire
experience of expressing empathy caused them to have positive feelings. The
worksheet can be handed back to the students after reviewing it, so that the
students can have a reminder of this experience and how they felt about using this
skill.
Homework
There will be no formal homework for this lesson. The students will be told to be
conscious of being empathetic in their real lives, and see the reactions that they
receive from people around them.
References
American School Counseling Association (2015). ASCA student standards: Program
planning tool. In

ASCA national model templates. Retrieved from

http://schoolcounselor.org/school-counselors- members/asca-nationalmodel/asca-national-model-templates