Help children focus on character values with this free one word activity created by The Curriculum Corner for classroom use.
This activity was inspired by the recent actions of the Purdue University men’s basketball team. If you are interested in reading the article yourself or sharing with your students, take a look here: Purdue Boilers.
As always, please be sure to preview the article beforehand to make sure it fits into your classroom. This activity can be completed without having students read the article.
If you have not heard of their actions, the team worked to choose values that would be displayed on their warm-up shirts. Words such as friendship, empathy and equality were chosen. Each team member has a shirt displaying a word that is meaningful to the team.
The actions of the men’s basketball team inspired us to create this activity. We see this being an activity that will fit well into the New Year (or back to school time.)
The goal of this activity is for students to choose one word that represents character values important to them. We have provided a variety of materials so you may guide your students to focus on your class as a hole, themselves or their family. Choose the correct printables to match your focus.
This activity might be completed as a whole class character values activity. After sharing the purpose of the lesson, it might be helpful to brainstorm a list of possible values with your students. Create an anchor chart of characters values which students can refer to while completing the activity.
Another option for this lesson is to have this be a family task. Students can work with their families to choose one word that shares an important value of the family.
This can also become a goal setting activity where students focus on one word they want to improve on over the coming year.
If you have other ideas or extensions, please share below to help other teachers!
The collection includes colorful posters for sharing a class word, bookmarks and even a list of values to help your students get started.
You can download this set here: Character Values
Remember to bookmark this activity so you can easily find it each school year. Not sure how to bookmark? Take a look at our tutorial here: Bookmarking in Chrome.