Module 8: Promoting Emotional Literacy and Empathy

Strategies to Promote Emotional Literacy and Empathy

·  Model empathy for children.

·  Do “alike” and “different” activities to show how we are all alike in some things and different in others and differences are what make each person special.

·  Draw children’s attention to how others are feeling. For example, draw attention to how a child’s actions impact other children during daily routines.

·  Use storyboards as potential teaching tools by having large paper dolls without mouths and an assortment of different feeling faces (happy, sad, mad, nervous, excited, etc.) available. The teacher then tells a story about the boy/girl paper doll and pauses to allow the children to identify the feeling the paper doll might be experiencing.

·  Children can also cut pictures of different feeling faces out of magazines and then talk about how the person in their picture feels and how they know that is how the person feels (happy/smile on face, sad/tears running down face, mad/scowl on face). These kinds of activities help children understand how others are feeling.

·  Role play situations so children have opportunities to see how they might respond to another person who might be sad, hurt, etc…. Ask children how they would feel if they were crying and another child tried to help them feel better. How would they feel if no one paid any attention to them if they were crying?

·  Reinforce empathy behaviors.

·  Validate emotions by encouraging children to express their feelings is key to fostering emotional health. No matter how unreasonable a reaction seems, the child needs the emotion to be accepted. Discouraging the feelings by saying “You’re Okay” denies the child the opportunity to express his or her genuine emotion. It also denies them the opportunity to learn to deal with emotions appropriately. Instead of invalidating a child’s emotions by saying “you’re okay” try to provide validating responses that acknowledge the child’s emotion and the cause of the emotion. For example, instead of saying things like “Don’t cry” or “It’s alright, nothing happened” acknowledge the response and cause by being non-judgmental, labeling the emotion, offering a strategy or problem solve with the child or by redirecting when the child is calm (Lansbury, 2010).

·  Free resource for stories read online. Google Storyline Online, Actors read their favorite children’s story and the stories are animated. Includes stories such as Pete the Cat, Stella Luna, and Enemy Pie.

References

Iowa State University Department of Human Development & Family Studies. (2013).Train-Coach-Train. Retrieved from https://iastate.app.box.com/s/9rg5sxh5mfh43da7e05k

Lansbury, J. (2010, February 9). Giving Your Child the Brush-Off. [Web log post]. Retrieved from

http://www.janetlansbury.com/2010/01/giving-your-children-the-brush-off/

Effective Teacher Practices Supporting

North Carolina Foundations for Early Learning and Development
NC Early Learning Network, a joint project of NC-DPI and UNC-FPG, 2016