5 Simple School Counseling Activities to Help Students Understand Others

Children often know the difference between being nice and being mean, but understanding another person’s feelings can be more challenging. A student may laugh when a classmate makes a mistake without realizing that the classmate feels embarrassed. Another may ignore a peer who is sitting alone because they do not recognize that the peer wants to be included.

Empathy helps children look beyond their own perspective and consider what another person might be experiencing. For elementary school counselors, teaching empathy is an essential part of social-emotional learning, friendship development, and character education.

December offers a natural opportunity to remind students that caring for others begins with noticing, listening, and trying to understand.

What Is Empathy?

Empathy is the ability to recognize, consider, and try to understand another person’s feelings and perspective.

Empathy does not require us to have experienced the exact same situation. Instead, it encourages us to pause and consider what another person might be thinking or feeling.

Empathy also involves recognizing that people may react differently to the same situation. What feels exciting to one child may feel frightening to another.

Why Do Elementary Students Need to Learn Empathy?

Children are still developing the ability to recognize emotions, understand different perspectives, and predict how their behavior affects others. These skills do not always develop automatically; students benefit from direct instruction, modeling, and opportunities to practice.

Without empathy, children may misinterpret a peer’s behavior, dismiss another person’s feelings, or struggle to respond appropriately when someone is upset.

School counselors can teach students to notice emotional cues, listen without immediately judging, ask thoughtful questions, and consider different explanations for another person’s behavior.

Empathy is particularly important when addressing friendship conflicts, bullying, exclusion, and misunderstandings.

Five Simple Ways to Practice Empathy in School Counseling

1. Feelings Detective: Show pictures of facial expressions and discuss what clues might suggest different emotions.
2. Perspective Switch: Present a playground disagreement and have students explain how each person might view the situation.
3. Listen and Reflect: Pair students. One shares a minor frustration while the other practices listening and reflecting, such as, “That sounds disappointing.”
4. What Might They Need?: Read a scenario and brainstorm whether the person might need help, encouragement, space, inclusion, or someone to listen.
5. Empathy Exit Ticket: Before leaving the session, ask students to name one way they can better understand someone else’s feelings this week.

These activities help students move from simply naming emotions to choosing responses that show consideration and care.

Students will not always understand one another, and they will not always respond perfectly. What matters is helping them learn to pause, listen, ask questions, and consider another perspective before acting.

December challenge: Encourage students to ask themselves one question before responding to a classmate: “What might this person be feeling, and how can I show that I care?”