Resources For Education

Cultivating Compassion: Teachers' Guide and Student Activities, offers lesson plans, hand-outs, and activities for teaching that farmed animals have feelings, too. The material offers a gentle, thought-provoking, sometimes humorous but always realistic, approach to a difficult subject often ignored in the classroom: the welfare of farm animals.

Students are encouraged to look critically at the impressions of farm life that they have always taken for granted, compare them with the new information they are being given, and explore its relation to their own principles and values. The materials have been designed for three levels of students: Elementary (grades 3-5), Intermediate (grades 6-8), and Secondary (grades 9-12). The packets include five lesson plans and numerous exercises that can be reproduced for students.

The lessons help students explore questions such as:

• What is a sanctuary?
• Who are the rescued animals at Farm Sanctuary?
• Are modern day farms really the way we imagine them to be?
• What can we do to improve the lives of farm animals?

The five lessons in each level can be completed in one week or stretched out over a much longer period. To help teachers fulfill learning standards, the exercises include connections to language and communication skills, math and science skills, and creative processes. Whether students are familiar with cows, pigs, chickens, and other farm animals, or not — they are sure to learn a lot and have fun doing it.

Download Cultivating Compassion in Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format.
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• Elementary Level (Grades 3-5)
• Intermediate Level (Grades 6-8)
• Secondary Level (Grades 9-12)

Comments from Teachers:

"Cultivating Compassion: Teachers' Guide and Student Activities is an enormously important contribution to humane education. Not only are the activities innovative and effective at raising awareness and instilling compassion, they specifically cover farmed animals who are neglected in almost all educational curricula. Cultivating Compassion is an excellent resource for teachers, activists and humane educators - the more it's used, the faster we will create a compassionate society."

- Zoe Weil, president of International Institute for Humane Education and author of The Power and Promise of Humane Education and Above All, Be Kind: Raising a Humane Child in Challenging Times

"Well-designed curriculum packets that help to build critical thinking skills and empathy. Fantastic photogtaphs and life stories of individual rescued farm animals. Belong in every grades 3 - 12 classroom nationwide."

- Dr. Sheila Schwartz, Chair United Federation of Teachers
Humane Education Committee

"The Cultivating Compassion program is engaging for children and encourages empathy and critical thinking. The beautiful, colorful pictures of the farm animals are great visuals for students. The lessons are teacher-friendly and help children learn about difficult issues in a sensitive way. It is a vital part of any well-rounded curriculum."

- Julie O'Connor, Instructional Support Specialist Region 10 NYC