Focusing on teaching one to inculcate positive attitudes, scrupulous beliefs and appropriate behaviour, character education is a prominent part in school curriculums. Good character education can set the foundation of ground rules for life in young adults. Additionally, it stresses the importance of becoming conscious, committed, and competent.
To that end, here are a few character-building activities that every educator must conduct to provide a unique learning space.
The Power of Words
It’s easy for kids to pick up bad language, to the extent that they sound bigoted and offend others. This activity aims at curbing the bad habits of using mean words and verbally belittling others.
One good technique to follow this activity is to take cardboard cutouts of a person or cartoon character and pass them around the class. As you pass it around, ask each student to say something about it. The students will make a negative or positive comment based on the marked parts. Later, you can hold up each cutout and ask them about their comments. That way, you can teach them how to use appropriate words to put any kind of comments. Alongside, they also learns the impact of one’s words after one says them.
Seeking diversity
This activity is geared toward finding each participant’s unique traits. Here you can make the students in the group draw a stem or bud of a flower. Afterwards, you ask each student to explain and discuss different things unique to them. The discussion shall not pertain to physical qualities.
After discussion, give each of them a chance to draw one petal on the flower and label it using these unique qualities. Such activity can help them understand a character’s various features.
Helpful vs. Hurtful
This exercise aims to teach children the difference between helpful and hurtful actions. It encourages them to substitute negative actions with positive ones.
You can conduct the activity by discussing the scenarios that explains how to differentiate helpful from hurtful words. You can also create different actions with six statements each hand. After an intensive discussion, ask students to come and write the actions they can remember under two columns. That way, you can ensure students remember the helpful and hurtful aspects.
Strength finders
Strength finder activities let students seek strength among individuals. Now how can you conduct this? Provide students with masking tape and raw spaghetti. Then ask them to use the given material to build the tallest free-standing tower possible. The student who made the tallest tower will be declared the game’s winner. While making such towers, students will see that the spaghetti needs to be handled carefully as it is delicate. That way, you can teach them how patience can be the greatest attribute and strength of an individual.
Ask about the attributes of a good friend
In this activity, you call students and tell them to contribute one factor that makes a good friend. Then, you can rank them and ask your students to inculcate the mentioned qualities to be a better friend.
Button pushing
This character-building activity promotes emotional intelligence. The exercise aims to have students identify what “pushes their buttons”. To try this activity, you can make a colour scheme to elicit an emotion associated with a particular colour. For instance, red can denote angry, blue denotes sadness, and green means good. Then ask them to paint the colours on the board to communicate about their moods and feelings with you and their peers. You can also teach them to verbalise ‘don’t push my buttons’ where necessary. Such an activity also creates a sense of empathy among students.
Walk in one’s shoes
This is yet another effective character-building activity that increases emotional intelligence among individuals. To conduct this activity, print out pictures of four different shoes. Then, write a different scenario underneath each, such as:
“My friend called me a bad name”
“Someone pushed me over”
“Someone gave me a cake”
After that, make different students stand over each captioned shoe picture and ask how they would react if they were in that position. For older students, you can draw advanced scenarios such as “someone makes fun of you for x reason.” However, you must be careful to avoid potential trauma or anxiety triggers with this exercise. The activity is also a great way to learn how past incidents deeply affect an individual.
Taking it back
This exercise can be a messy one among children. However, here you make students learn the impact of words and how difficult it can be to “take back” something rude or upsetting you have said. It is similar to the power of words exercise but with a better visual approach.
You can take salt, pepper, or a sugar shaker to conduct this activity. Then tell a student to come up and say something mean and shake the shaker slightly on a coloured paper towel. After you have done this a few times, ask another student to come and put the substance back into the shaker. Then you can explain to them how the words once said can’t be taken back just like the substances cannot be put back into the shakers.
Bucket-filler activity
It is a simple activity where you make paper pouches for your students shaped like buckets. Then you instruct students to fill out a small piece of paper with a positive comment and place it in another student’s bucket throughout the day. Ensure that all students get a few remarks in their corporate law assignment help.
For older ages, you can transform this activity in an anonymous debate style, keeping three topics as buckets and letting students anonymously place their opinions inside the cards. Such an action can promote empathy and the practice of saying words of affirmation to an individual unknowingly.
Final thoughts,
Character-building activities in the school community enhance students’ behaviour and the school environment. Most of these character-building activities can also increase classroom participation. Moreover, such planned activities also excite children to participate and engage in different tasks that break the monotonous assignment experts. So, use these above-mentioned activity ideas to ensure that your students grow up to be more responsible human beings.
