Teachers and mentors are some of the most influential people in a child’s life. As a result, creating a teaching environment which promotes and respects values is essential to ensure the next generation grow up being happy and feeling empowered.
Encouraging kindness in the classroom will create a positive environment for students and inspire them to be kind in other areas of their lives. Ready to start incorporating values into your lesson plans? Follow our guide below, with some of our favourite tips.
Introduce happiness and kindness into the classroom by asking students to define the words in their own terms. Once you have compiled their answers, the class can work together to come up with a general definition and motto for the classroom.
Ignite their interest further by encouraging students to perform simple acts of kindness such as complementing one another, opening the door for a fellow student, or even by practicing random acts of kindness using our “Being Kind to You and Me: Secret Friends” lesson plan.
Putting these values into real-life scenarios will help add weight to their importance, while also encouraging your students to continue to practise these values in other situations.
More often than not, finding the time to create lesson plans based on important values can be difficult when there are mountains of maths corrections to make, poetry lines to mark and geography resources to prepare. As vital necessities to ensure your students become the best possible version of themselves, we should be placing equal importance on teaching the value of happiness and kindness.
Our recently launched Education for Social Responsibility resources (ESR) are the perfect way to teach happiness and kindness in the classroom. From “Being Kind to You and Me” to “What is Happiness”, we have ample resources to choose from. These lesson plans, designed with your KS1 and KS2 students in mind, come with accompanying slideshows and printable resources, and are sure to leave a lasting impression!
As a teacher, you have an integral influence on the way the next generation thinks and behaves. Consequently, it is extremely important you instil kindness within the next generation, so they can hope and strive for peace and harmony in the world.
You could even go further, by sharing real-life examples and anecdotes of acts of kindness you have performed or witnessed and the impact they might have had on the recipient. By making these values more tangible for your students, they will quickly recognise the impact their actions can have – and therefore more likely to implement these values themselves.
For more Education for Social Responsibility resources continue to our ESR lessons or to read more about why we have created these lessons, read our ESR blog.
Leave a comment