Web of Lives – Building Empathy, Oracy, Respect & Agency Through Human-Centred Learning PSHE RSHE Lessons and assemblies
Empathy, Oracy & Whole-School Ethos Through Safe Human-Centred Learning
PSHE | Citizenship | SMSC | Personal Development | KS3–KS5
Struggling to help students discuss sensitive human issues with confidence, empathy, and respect — without triggering unsafe disclosures or shallow responses?
The Web of Lives Bundle is an interactive, fictional, card-based learning system that enables young people to explore identity, behaviour, relationships, power, and consequence safely and meaningfully.
By using fictional lives rather than personal disclosure, learners engage deeply while teachers maintain clear safeguarding boundaries.
✅ The problem it solves
Teachers often face:
Superficial answers to complex social issues
Learners shutting down during PSHE or Citizenship
Difficulty teaching empathy, accountability, and respect
Risk around sensitive topics and disclosures
A lack of consistency in whole-school values work
💡 The solution: Web of Lives
This resource provides a structured yet flexible framework that:
✔ Builds empathy, respect, and shared understanding
✔ Develops oracy, presentation, and reflective skills
✔ Creates a safe fictional space to explore real human problems
✔ Supports a whole-school ethos of care, responsibility, and dignity
✔ Helps learners see how small actions (kindness or harm) ripple across lives and families
Teachers can manipulate the same card sets to draw out different learning outcomes — from inclusion and disempowerment to accountability, resilience, and change.
🧠 Why it works
Fictional characters remove fear of exposure
Human-centred scenarios cut across identity differences
Learners relate emotionally without self-disclosing
Discussion is structured, purposeful, and safe
This allows meaningful exploration of issues affecting all young people, while encouraging learners to see themselves as instigators of positive change, not passive products of circumstance.
🎯 Ideal for
PSHE, Citizenship, RS, tutor time
Oracy & presentation development
Personal Development & SMSC
Whole-school values and inclusion work
KS3, KS4, KS5 (easily scaffolded)
🔑 Outcomes
Learners will:
Communicate ideas confidently and respectfully
Understand how lives and choices are interconnected
Build empathy across difference
Recognise responsibility, impact, and change
