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Spark Interest through Empathy

Tags

ELA: Reading Social-Emotional Learning All Ages Strategy

Skills

Social Awareness Verbal Reasoning Verbal Memory

Spark Interest through Empathy

If you want to increase engagement in the story, with a particular focus on character development

Instruction And Practice

  1. Objective: Helping students build empathy for the characters in fiction stories will support their interest in the reading, and help strengthen empathy and social skills.
  2. Introduce the story's characters before the student begins to read. In non-fiction, provide the historical figure's background.
  3. At appropriate points during the reading, ask the student's opinion of the character. Ask if the student was ever in a similar situation and how she felt at the time. Does this character remind you of someone you know and why?
  4. Encourage students to notice changes in a character's behavior or traits over the course of the story. (Maybe the character was angry at first and then became happy.)
  5. Teacher Notes: Anticipate that early readers will focus on more concrete, observable traits about the character (e.g. athleticism, appearance, mood). Over time, it will be important to help the student infer qualities about the character such as motivations, values, or inconsistencies between words and actions.

Why It Works (the Science Of Learning)!

Engagement is key to making reading desirable as well as relieving some of the burden of the mechanics of reading. In addition, research shows that reading fiction builds empathy in real world situations, as students feel empathy for characters in the story.