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to step into the shoes of different characters and see the world from alternative viewpoints. Using established drama conventions such as Conscience Alley (a pupil takes on the role of a character and walks between two lines of people offering their advice), Freeze Frames (children work together to ‘pause’ an image from a book, while considering body language and emotions) and Hot Seating (a child is interviewed in role) can all help underpin and reinforce understanding of a character and their motivations. When drama is part of regular classroom practice – it can be used effectively in most curriculum areas – pupils develop a deeper understanding of human behaviour and begin to understand that people have diverse backgrounds, values, and motivations. Creating an Empathy Emotions Map ( tinyurl.com/ tp-Emap ) when reading a story is a useful way to keep a record of a character’s thoughts, feelings and actions, as well as their relationships with other characters, in a visual form. We recently created one based around the character of Nate from The Final Year by Matt Goodfellow. It can be done as a whole class, but is also effective when completed in small groups or individually. Several members of my class choose to create empathy emotions maps in their reading journals, which are based around characters from their independent reading books, and will sometimes develop this into a short piece of narrative or dialogue from that character’s point of view. Writing a Perspective Journal can also be helpful when reading a book together. Thinking about the main five or six characters in a story and then writing a short entry each day from multiple perspectives can help pupils understand how different people might view the same situation. There is a fight scene in Wonder by R.J. Palacio where this works wonderfully. Exploring the point of view of the antagonists is something the children enjoy doing and helps focus their thinking about the reasons behind the behaviour of certain characters. Do as I do As is the case with most writing, modelling the process, creating your own example and writing alongside the class, can be extremely powerful. Recently, we learned about Captain Scott’s doomed expedition to the South Pole. Once they’d learned the details of the story, pupils were totally absorbed by the fact that he spent his last few days writing letters to his family in a freezing tent as an enormous snowstorm raged outside. We read some of his final letters together and then tried to imagine what it would have been like to have been in his position. Thinking from the perspective of Scott, I started to write my own ‘farewell’ letter with input from the class. I made a point of talking through my thought process and articulating how I, as Scott, would have been feeling. I deliberately talked about the emotions I was experiencing (desperation, hopelessness, guilt and frustration, among many others), explaining what they meant, and tried to include these in my letter. The children picked up on the language I was using and were then able to apply this successfully to their own work. When this is done several times across a year – it doesn’t always have to be a letter, it could be a diary entry, a piece of dialogue, a poem, a comic strip, etc – it becomes something with which children are increasingly confident. As pupils get used to writing from different points of view, they also get used to understanding real-life situations from varying perspectives. An unkind comment in the playground, a tired parent or an upset friend become easier to cope with and understand when children have experienced similar situations in books, and explored them from the safety of a classroom environment. TP “Learning to write from different perspectives will not only develop pupils’ writing skills, but also their own levels of empathy” T E ACH RE AD I NG & WR I T I NG empathylab.uk/empathy-day Jon Biddle is an experienced primary school teacher and English lead. Winner of the 2018 Reading for Pleasure Experienced Teacher of the Year award, he coordinates the national Patron of Reading initiative. www.teachwire.net | 67