Teaching Honesty in the Classroom
Honesty is a character trait that is so often forgotten in today’s pop culture. Our children are immersed in a life of social media, television, and other outlets that do not teach our students the value of honesty. As a first grade teacher, it is SO IMPORTANT to me that we train up our littles to be honest students from an early age. Hopefully, they will take the skills they learn and carry them through their school days. To introduce honesty, I love to complete this Honesty Lapbook with my students.
This lapbook is filled with so many opportunities for learning about honesty! To dig into our honesty discussion, we create an anchor chart about how we use our senses to show honesty and add this to our character wall. Then, students independently complete this flip book to make a personal connection and show how they can be an honest student. I encourage each student to write specific ways that they can show what honesty looks like through their actions. They will also write about what it feels like internally when they are honest and what honesty sounds like through their words.
We discuss why honesty is important through this flap book. Under each flap, students will write 1-2 sentences to answer each question. I love to post five large posters around the classroom and have students come up and write a sentence on each poster to answer each question. Post-its are great for this! This is a great way to help students find an appropriate answer to the question in their lapbooks if they are struggling with how to answer!
I love reading this narrative writing piece to see if my students truly understand the internal consequences of telling a lie. I always start out by having all my littles close their eyes to THINK so they are not distracted by any classroom disruptions. The purpose of this writing piece is not for students to share the lies they have told, but to help them reflect on how it felt to tell a lie. Since the prompt says to think about a time, I do not require my students to share what the lie was, but only to answer the two follow up questions after spending a few minutes reflecting.
Be sure to grab my Honesty Lapbook from my TpT store!
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Written on August 16th, 2018 by Laurin Brainard