Activity: Developing Kindness and Compassion

A lesson plan and activity in which students examine kindness and compassion in the scenario of waking someone up for KS2 (Year 3/4) students.

This activity links to Careers education as it showcases the role of a nurse on a ward.

After thinking about ‘kind’ and ‘unkind’ ways to wake someone up, they then have to consider how they would do it if they were a nurse. The scenario is: “Imagine you are a nurse starting the morning rounds in a hospital ward. One of your patients has been asleep all night. You need to wake them for breakfast and medication. They are recovering from surgery and might be feeling sore or tired.”

Student can then roleplay ‘kind’ and ‘unkind’ methods, before writing a step-by-step checklist of how to wake a patient with kindness.

I have used this activity before as part of an RE lesson where we are looking at the parable of the Good Samaritan. I’ve also used it as part of a British Values lesson [links to Mutual respect - To value others and treat them with dignity].

I also set the extension task as homework!