Resources for Teachers

Richard Reeves, Director of Demos, explores the idea of ‘good character’.

A Question of Character

A set of nine teaching activities developed by Learning for Life that will enable young people to discover what values are and why they are important. The back of the booklet contains all the resources you need to carry out the activities.

Becoming value-able

Who are you?  Who do you want to be? A teaching resource developed by Learning for Life that will enable young people to discover what character is needed to be successful in life as well as a successful member of society.

Character_Building

Poster to accompany the “Character Building” resource.

Character Building – Poster

A short guide for young people about what character employers are seeking in the people they recruit.

Character First

A pack designed to compliment the UK Citizenship Education curriculum. It contains activities that Citizenship Educators can use with their students to discuss and discover what it means to be a good citizen as well as a good citizen with character.

Citizenship_and_Character

The main aim of the activities in this pack is to introduce to young people the concepts of citizenship and having good characters. All the activities in the toolkit are aimed at Key Stage 3 and 4 students, although some maybe suitable for KS2 students.

Citizenship Teaching Pack

The focus of this exercise is to get primary school children to identify the actions, thoughts and words of a person with particular characteristics.

Developing Character

This activity is suitable for Key stage 3 or 4 students.  It considers an Obituary for Sir John Templeton and asks students to consider what values he held. This exercise can be used in a lesson focussing specifically on values e.g. within PHSE/ Citizenship or cross curricularly.

Examining other lives

This is a primary school programme for nine to eleven year olds which helps pupils grow, change and respond positively to opportunities, challenges and responsibilities in life. Pupils complete a specially designed poster template with a personal reflection section.

http://www.learningforlife.org.uk/primary/index.aspx

This resource can be used with upper primary or secondary school pupils to help them work out what are their priorities in life.

My Priorities

The activity is designed to help enhance our generosity and general well being. It is designed for upper primary and Year 7 students, but could work with older classes.

Positive Well Being

Running active citizenship projects can be one of the best ways for young people to develop their character.  There are a number of organisations that offer funds to young people to carry out well planned active citizenship projects.

Raising funds for Active Citizenship

A teaching pack that compliments the values poster award.  The pack consists of teaching ideas that make the poster award more attractive to schools and helps them to embed the poster award into their curriculum.

Teaching Pack – Values Poster

A set of teaching activities that looks at the importance of having courage.

Understanding Courage

A quick activity that works with KS2 and 3 students to get them thinking about their characters.

Write your Character in 6 words

Designed for secondary school students to look at their local community and evaluate what is good and bad about it. They are then encouraged to organise a project that will improve it. A Resource from: ASC/CSV.

Audit_Your_Community

A Resource from: DCSF
A handbook, developed by the government alongside several other charities, to help professionals Involve children and young people in developing policy, service planning, delivery and evaluation.

Building_A_Culture_Of_Part

A simple overview of 8 character traits (and examples of them) that schools and others could look to develop in young people. A resource from: Thomas Lickona and Matthew Davidson, Smart & Good High Schools (2005).

Eight_Strengths_Of_Character

A Resource from: Character Education Partnership (US)
http://www.character.org/
This American publication suggests eleven basic principles of character education.

Eleven_Principles_Of_Effective_Character_Education

The Institute for Excellence and Ethics have created a very useful set of evaluation tools. The tools can help benchmarking student competencies. One example of the tools is downloadable here. http://www.excellenceandethics.com/

Evaluation_Tools

A resource from Heartlines (www.heartlines.org.za) full of practical ideas to enable young people to start considering their own values, and what values are important to their families. http://www.heartlines.org.za/

Heartlines_For_Good

A Resource from: Plan International
This resource from Plan International encourages young people to learn about our people and countries. Young people are encouraged to think about their similarities and difference to other people, in this case Ethiopia.

Learn_About_Other_People_And_Countries

A workbook full of activities for 3-7 year olds  that foster the development of peaceful, cooperative social skills, involving the children not only cognitively and socially, but also artistically.

Living_Values_Activities_For_Ages_3-7

In this chapter from his book ‘ How to Help Our Children Develop Good Judgment, Integrity, and Other Essential Virtues’ (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 2004), Tom Lickona looks are how schools can develop successful character education programmes.

Make_Your_School_A_School_Of_Character

A resource from Heartlines (www.heartlines.org.za)that provides stimulating and fun activities that help 10-16 year olds put their values into action. http://www.heartlines.org.za/

Putting_Values_Into_Action

The American publication can help schools and others assess the effectiveness of their character education programmes. A Resource from: Character Education Partnership (US) http://www.character.org/

Quality_Standards

A Resource from: Institute for Character Education
This lesson contains pre-reading and post-reading activities for Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Collaboratively students will evaluate, rank, and discuss timeless moral and ethical events central to the play.

Romeo_And_Juliet

A Resource from: Schools Council UK
School councils are an excellent way for young people to take more responsibility in school but also learn about their rights. By joining a school council young people can develop themselves and also help improve schools.

Schools_Councils_Toolkit

This overview booklet of the Smart and Good high schools programme gives some suggestions for good practices in schools that can help build Character. A resource from: http://www.cortland.edu/character/highschool

Smart_And_Good

An evaluation of the NCSL Student Leadership programme. The programmes was designed to encourage young people to take on leadership roles in their schools and communities. A Resource from: NCSL.

Student_Leadership

A Resource from: Institute for Character Education
Students will be led through the five-step writing process (pre-writing, drafting, revising, editing, and final draft) to write a five-paragraph autobiographical essay. Students will respond to a set of writing prompts.

Writing_An_Essay_All_About_Me

A collection of over 600 fables each with different lessons about character.  Includes video and auditory versions of the fables.

http://aesopfables.com/

BeCaL is a Learning Gateway for students, teachers, leaders and researchers in education. It promotes relationships between research, policy and practice in the vital area of values, learning and cultural development.  The website is full of useful resources.

http://www.becal.org.uk/

A US organisation that promotes respect and responsibility. It defines character education as the intentional integration of excellence and ethics-developing performance character (doing our best work) and moral character (doing the right thing) within an ethical learning community.

http://www2.cortland.edu/centers/character/

The whole website is packed full of Citizenship Education resources – for primary, secondary and Post 16 teachers.

http://www.citized.info/

The New Zealand Foundation for Character Education. A website that suggests techniques for building up successful character education programmes in schools.

http://cornerstonevalues.org/

A website packed full of resources and ideas for teachers about how to get young more involved in their communities.

http://www.csveducation.org.uk/

CSV runs Make a Difference day. Every October people are challenged to volunteer. These packs give information and ideas for teachers about running Make a Difference day projects.

http://www.csv.org.uk/campaigns/csv-make-difference-day

Developmental Studies Centre (DSC) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to children’s academic, ethical, and social development. DSC programs help build children’s capacity to think clearly and critically while simultaneously deepening understanding.

http://www.devstu.org/

A website full of resources, based on history, to teach young people about values and human rights.

http://www.facinghistory.org/

Heartwood Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping teach children universal attributes of good character that form the foundations of community.

http://www.heartwoodethics.org/

The Institute of Excellence and Ethics (IEE) produce an excellent newsletter. Subscribe to it at the link below.

http://excellenceandethics.com/blog/subscribe/

Magical Moments Around the World is a global educational project uniting youth from schools all over the world sharing their magical moments.

http://www.magicalmoment.net/EN/

A website full of resources developed by character education teachers in America. The resources are for both primary and secondary teachers and they are all free to download.

http://www.midgefrazel.net/

Operation Respect offers its own program, “Don’t Laugh At Me” (DLAM), that provides effective strategies for creating positive transformational change.

http://www.operationrespect.org/

A website full of schemes of work for teaching Primary Religious Education from Foundation year to Year 6. The resource contains a number of teaching module options and includes assessment guidelines for Key Stages 1 and 2.

http://www.cist.org.uk/pv/pm/pp1001.htm

This extensive resource looks in turn at each of the six pillars of character education – and suggests ways for teachers to teach each of them.

http://www.goodcharacter.com/HStopics.html

Developing Fairness and Concern for Others. Linking educators, scholars, and citizens interested in sharing their work and learning more about research, practice, and activities in the area of moral development and education.

http://tigger.uic.edu/~lnucci/MoralEd/

Fictional characters’ struggles are of interest to students as they strive to set a course for their own life journey. This book will show how you can help your pupils to examine literary characters’ choices and commitments.

Give grants to schools to help develop Philanthropy skills in young people. Lots of useful teaching resources on the website to help students learn the fundamentals of philanthropy.

http://www.toskanfoundation.org/

A useful article for teachers, full of practical ideas for the classroom, about how to teach values in a fun and engaging way.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pric/is_199811/ai_965668167/

An online meeting place for people interested in values and learning.  The online learning centre suggests a process that will help teachers to develop their own whole school approach to values in education.

http://www.vitalhub.net/