Honesty
(Second Grade)

Purpose: By the end of this session, I want my students to desire to be honest.  

Other resources:  

Great article on honesty: http://character-education.info/Articles/Honesty_Urban.htm 

Teaching Hints: 

• Students want to know how you've struggled with honesty, yet why you're passionate about it. Think through your own life experiences. How did a romantic relationship go sour because of dishonesty? Have family members, co-workers, employers, or friends hurt you with dishonesty? Have you seen someone fail because of their dishonesty? How has being less than honest hurt you? How has your honesty helped you? 
• Use one or more of these personal stories in your lesson. You'll find that as you share personally, your students will reflect and share their own life lessons about honesty.

1. Define Honesty (Discussion)

"What is honesty?" (Write their answers on the board and come up with a working definition. Something like, "Telling the truth; not lying or deceiving.")

2. Understand Why People Lie (Discussion and Game)

"Why do you think people lie?" (Get some discussion. You might want to get the ball rolling by sharing what's tempted you to lie in the past, or why you feel others have lied to you.) Possible reasons:

• They're about to get into trouble, so they lie and say "I didn't do it!"
• They want attention, so they tell lies to impress people: "Over Christmas, I jumped out of a helicopter and skied down a steep mountain, causing an avalanche."
• To make interesting conversation, they pass on information that might not be true, as if they know it to be true. "Did you hear about Jenny? She stole a watch from Sears and got caught."

Let's see how easy it is to get involved in that last kind of lie: passing on rumors as if we know them to be true. 

The Gossip Game

Let's start a rumor! I'll start by telling one person a story; but let's see how it changes as it goes through the class. I'll start by whispering it to Char, then she will whisper it to the person behind her, till it goes through the class. Try to repeat the story like the person tells you. 

Hint #1: Make the story interesting - something embarrassing or close to being scandalous. Give plenty of details like names and places, so that   each student  will likely mess up several details. If you actually read it to the first student, you can tell the class at the end the exact story as you first read it.

Example Story: "My  sister Carol drove to Kroger with her music blasting, singing along to Steppenwolf's  Born to Be Wild, not realizing she was speeding and weaving. A police car pulled up behind her and turned on its police lights to get her to pull over, but she didn't hear them. So when she whipped her car into the the parking lot, the police thought she was trying to escape. She got arrested for dangerous driving. And the worst thing was, our parents drove by and saw her get arrested!"

Hint #2: Consider playing music in the background to make it more fun, since students will have to wait while the story's being passed along.

3. Understand How Dishonesty Hurts People

Discussion (With these questions, try to move them beyond understanding lies and gossip to feeling how it hurts them and others):

1) How did the story get so messed up?
2) Do you think that happens in real life, to stories we pass on to our friends?
3) Have you ever been hurt by a rumor that went around about you? Can you tell about it? (Teacher: you might start with how gossip once hurt you.)
4) Why should we refuse to lie and to pass on rumors? (Because they hurt people. We know how much it hurts; so let's not hurt others.)
5) How can honesty stop rumors? (We refuse to pass them on if they might hurt someone or if we don't know they're true.)

Action Point

Today, let's think before we speak. Let's ask ourselves, "do I know what I'm about to say is true?"