Character Education: Create a Positive Classroom Community with Positive Character Traits Fun Activities
How do you address character education in your classroom? Do you put up a few posters and point out the traits a couple times a year? Are you looking for meaningful activities to teach students what it means to have good character?
When I first started teaching in 2001, it seemed like character education was part of our weekly routine. Our district focused on Character Counts! Somewhere along the way, though, it seemed to slowly go away. I have a feeling it was when everything became driven around standardized testing.
In more recent years, it seems it’s made a comeback. There are several different books and resources available now, and it’s not hard to implement. However, I think it really depends on the teacher. I’ve seen it. Some, like me, make it a priority and know it MUST be included in our curriculum. Others just don’t seem to care.
I truly believe that character education will make a huge difference in your classroom. We want students to be caring, respectful, and responsible, but what if they’ve never really been taught those things? What if we’re just assuming they’re coming into our classroom understanding what a person of good character looks like, but they don’t?
Character Education does not need to be time consuming. It’s easy to carve out some time throughout the year. You could fit several activities in at the beginning of the school year, while establishing routines and expectations. Some worksheets could be added to your sub folders. Do you have early finishers? (If you don’t, what’s your secret?!) Make some of these activities ‘extra’ for those students. Several of these may also fit in nicely when you teach social studies and writing.
Keep reading to see how easy it can be to create a positive classroom community while teaching about positive character traits.
Posters can be a great addition to your classroom, but you need to ensure students understand the meaning of different traits.
All of these activities will help you teach what positive character traits are, and how STUDENTS can show these traits at school, at home, and out in their community.
In addition to students understanding their own character through their actions, they will be able to notice what traits a character has in a story they’re reading. Grasping character analysis will improve your students’ reading comprehension!
BONUS IDEAS:
- Create a CHARACTER bulletin board in your classroom or hallway. Keep it up all year, and use these activities to show off how your class has AMAZING character!
- Keep ALL of these activities and have students create a CHARACTER BOOK to take home at the end of the year!
The bundle includes 17 activities to use throughout the whole school year. What’s great about this bundle is it reinforces the same key traits several times, and it gives students the opportunity to write about how THEY show each of these character traits!
WHAT ACTIVITIES ARE INCLUDED?
What will students focus on?
- A Kind Classmate
- An Amazing Teacher
- A Great Friend
- A Good Student
- Being a Good Listener
- How to Work Together
- Goals
Character counts with this positive character traits resource! Students fill out a graphic organizer with each character trait. There’s a pennant/banner for each trait for sentence and/or paragraph writing.
This is a great positive character traits activity to complete with students where they think about positive character traits they have. Students decide on two character traits they think they show off well. They fill out the graphic organizers and complete the light bulbs.
If you teach an older grade, you can discuss positive and negative connotation while brainstorming positive traits.
These positive character traits activities include graphic organizers and worksheets. There is a list of 32 traits for students to show their character counts!
For each trait students will fill out a graphic organizer explaining how they show that character trait at school, at home, and in the community. Then, they fill out the sentence frame on the trait page choosing one of their details from the previous page.
Students prove they’re a good citizen with this fun positive character education trait activity. Students brainstorm and list what it means to be a good citizen, and how they show they’re a good citizen in the classroom, on the playground, and in the community.
Teach your students to be Bucket Fillers! Students write a short note to a classmate giving a compliment.
Give your students a fun keepsake book for Star of the Week, Class VIP, or Star Student! These fun frames allow you to create a book for the star student with their cover and their classmates pages.
What a great way for students to truly SEE their classmates!
These growth mindset coloring pages are great to use anytime of the year. You can use these along with your positive character trait activities. They can be used for early finishers, or they can be used to create a book at the end of the year.
Character counts with these FIVE activities focusing on the character traits HELPFUL, CARING, RESPECTFUL, RESPONSIBILITY, & TRUSTWORTHINESS.
These activities are simple to complete, and students can do them on their own.
This bundle includes FOUR resources with 27 positive character traits to create into acrostic poems!
Acrostic poems can be a great way for students to demonstrate their knowledge on a subject. Discuss the trait with students, brainstorming some words and phrases that could go along with each of the letters. Students can get colorful and creative with their final product! Great for centers or early finishers!
As educators, it’s important to make sure students understand what it means to be nice, caring, and compassionate. The more years I taught, the more I realized that several students were coming to me not truly understanding good character and how they could show it themselves.
I hope you will find some of these activities helpful so that we can show young kids that character really does count!
~Jennifer Cook
✨ Some of these are available in my emergency substitute plans resources. You can see more by clicking below.