Fostering Empathy and Communication

Challenge

Greenmount Primary School has an 89% EAL intake, and they found that many of their children were struggling to share personal experiences and communicate effectively - due to a combination of socio-emotional and language challenges.

"Empathy is a focus at our school and so we have really utilised this through the Experiences. We try to focus on the characters' feelings and relate them to the children's lives. This is ongoing and we are starting to see even the most reluctant of children share their own experiences." - Nikki Green, Year 1 Teacher

The school has found that now>press>play’s ability to foster empathy has a striking impact upon children sharing more openly, as well as communicating more richly.

Solution

Empathy and Communication

Greenmount found that now>press>play's immersive Experiences helps put their children in other people's shoes, and this encourages even their most hesitant children to open up.

Not only were their children empathising and talking more, but the school found that the quality of their communication was also improved, due to the high level of vocabulary recall:

"Oracy is a big focus at our school due to 89% having EAL. The language the children can recall after an Experience is amazing."

Linked to this impact around vocabulary is also the strong retention of the topic at large, and the emotional engagement with the story.

"We started the topic with the now>press>play Experience, and 25 minutes later, they could retell Neil Armstrong's life and moon landing in detail." - Year 1 Teacher

Impact

• 91% of teachers say their class discuss the issues fluently and enthusiastically

• 83% of teachers believe now>press>play fosters their pupils' empathy

Greenmount Primary School saw firsthand how now>press>play can inspire empathy and elevate communication skills. Discover more success stories and see the impact for yourself.

This case study was kindly provided by Nikki Green and Greenmount Primary School. The statistics are from our recent teacher evaluation, which anonymously surveyed 190 educators.