An important part of reading and writing is exploring characters and the role they play in a story. Empathy is a key word here – children have to be able to put themselves in a character’s shoes and think about their motives and emotions.
This can be difficult, especially for younger children, but empathising with book characters and considering why they chose this course of action, or what the consequences would be if they chose another, is a great way to develop a wide range of thinking and communication skills.
Below you’ll find 5 classroom activities which will help your students explore and empathise with the characters they're reading about. They work best with primary age pupils but there’s no reason why older students won’t enjoy them too.
The activities are all adapted from Ros Wilson’s fantastic Ideas for Big Talk (Andrell Education). Downloahttps://www.andrelleducation.com/d the full booklet here.
Activity 1: Thought tracking
This technique supports children in examining the private thoughts of characters at certain points in a story (particularly tense moments work well here).