Empathy Middle School Counseling Group - Teaching Empathy in Middle School

This 6-week middle school empathy counseling group is designed to help students recognize, practice, and promote empathy. In addition, students will practice perspective-taking. This in-depth curriculum includes everything you need to run a successful middle school school counseling small group on empathy including self-assessments to make data tracking easy. The included weekly outlines are aligned with CASEL Standards and ASCA Mindsets and Behaviors.

Students will learn the skills they need to demonstrate empathy.

Middle School Empathy Group Outline:
Week 1: Defining empathy
Week 2: Identifying other people’s feelings
Week 3: Anticipating reactions from others

Week 4: Responding with empathy

Week 5: Verbally responding with empathy

Week 6: Promoting empathy in the school

Lessons/Activities Included:

• Tic Tac Toe
• Dice Game
• Role Play
• Never have I ever game
• Discussion Dice
• Videos
• Charades
• Photo Game
• Hot Potato
• Beach Ball Discussion
• Conversation Cards
• Schoolwide Activity

Here is what's included each week:

• Outlines: Easy to implement outlines with ASCA and CASEL-aligned objectives
• Group Rules: Suggested and DIY Group Rules poster so students can take ownership of the creation of the group rules and norms.
• Feelings Check: Feelings Check Poster to serve as a visual aid for students to self-reflect on their emotional state at the start of each session.
• Self-Assessments: Pre and post-group self-assessments to track student growth and make data collection easy!
• Engaging games and activities: I include everything you need to run each session. Simply print each week before the students arrive and you are ready to go.
• Self Reflection Journal: Weekly journal reflections with writing prompts.

Benefiting Students:

Each week students will develop skills to recognize how others are feeling and act using empathy.

At a minimum, being in the counseling group allows students to identify and share their feelings, develop important social skills through participation, and practice empathy while hearing others’ experiences.

Saving Time:
With easy-to-implement outlines and activities, this group curriculum is very low-prep. Simply print out each session before students arrive and keep them in a file folder.

The included self-assessments are a great way to get students to self-reflect on their progress and you can then share this information with teachers, and parents, or in your program report.

Who is this Group Designed For?
This empathy small group is designed for middle school students in grades 6-8 but it can be modified to work with students across different grade levels.

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