Character Education Generosity Teaching Activities

Teaching generosity in the classroom is more important than ever! If you are looking for ways to incorporate character education in your classroom, check out this post for a review of my entire resource. It’s filled with lessons, activities, and ideas to help you build a positive culture in your classroom, empower students to be their best selves, and make this school year different. If you’re looking just to focus on generosity, find my Character Education Generosity bundle here.

A full resource for Character Education Generosity

Take a look at the activities and lessons below. They are all from my Generosity Social Emotional Learning and Character Education resource. The goal of this resource is to help students understand how to be generous with their time, talents, and actions. 

Generosity Character Education Pacing Guide

This pacing guide organizes your whole month of generosity. It will help you plan and set aside enough time to complete the curriculum with your students. 

Generosity Parent Letter

Parent letters are an effective tool to use in the classroom. These letters get parents involved so they can reinforce the character education lessons at home. The letter included in the resource provides parents and families with tools to help them explain, model, and praise generosity in the home. Additionally, it includes a list of books and movies that families can enjoy together. 

Generosity Picture Books

Age-appropriate picture books are a great way to give students examples of Character Education. It also gives students shared context when facilitating class discussion. There’s so many ways to show generosity and these books are a great way to explore that. You can get some great conversations by taking a few minutes to read through books with students. My resource includes links for each book I recommend so you can check it out more in-depth. 

Generosity Bulletin Board

Bulletin boards are what I usually start with when introducing a new Character Education trait. It’s a great way to introduce and define the concept. It’s also where I start class discussions. In my generosity resource, I include everything you’ll need to introduce generosity to your students. 

This is a beautiful display – keep it up the entire month that you are teaching generosity. You can add a quote of the week, generosity scenarios to discuss, writing prompts for the wekk, or posters.

Generosity Anchor Chart

Anchor charts are perfect for using as a reference. Students can take a quick glance throughout the month as they work on responses, questions, and contribute to discussions. The anchor chart activity fits in perfectly after showing students the bulletin board. You can use it to accompany a mentor text as well. Because the anchor chart has a discussion questions, I think students will get the most benefit by doing it together as a class. 

Generosity Poster

Use posters as your class decor to remind students about showing generosity. I include four different posters that define generosity, utilizing unique clip art that shows examples of generosity. The clip art used includes multicultural children to reflect the diverse learners in our classrooms. 

Hang the posters on a bulletin board, create a display in the hallway, or pass out individual sized posters for students to keep at their desk.

Generosity Calendar

Learning about generosity and its importance is the first step for students. Taking action is the next step! Students will internalize generosity and build the habit. Then your students won’t need ot think about ways to be generous with others. It will be a default way of approaching any situation! 

Use this calendar to challenge you students to show generosity each day of the month. The calendar is editable so you can change the month and the acts listed. You can make different versions of the calendar so students are doing different acts of generosity than classmates. 

Each day you can take a few minutes to address the calendar and discuss ideas for how to complete the act listed for the day. Once completed, students can color that square. 

Generosity Doodle Notes

Doodle notes are so fun! The doodle reflection page is a creative way to get students to think bout what generosity is and ways they can show it. The activity includes reflection questions, examples of generosity, fun quotes, and doodles to color. 

Generous with Talents Activity

Students will create a list of their talents, and think about ways they can use these talents to generously share with others. Students will draw one of their talents, and answer reflection questions about how they can share their talent and how others might feel when they share.

Charity Poster

Students will design a poster for a charitable cause to encourage support. Students can choose a specific charity they are familiar with or a cause they care about. Be sure to talk with students about what a charitable cause is and the ways people can show support. Students will plan their posters before designing.

Give and Keep Activity

The class will help Charlie be generous by helping her decide how to share her chocolates. Students will be given situation cards and travel to stations. After reading, students will discuss in a small group and answer on their recording sheets what should be kept or shared. Everyone will rotate to all the stations before reflecting on some final questions.

Generous Coupon Book Activity

Students will make a list of generous acts that they are good at, and generous acts they can do to help others. Students should highlight what they want to include in their coupon book. There are ten templates in my resource and one cover page. Students will create their own coupon books full of their talents.

Generosity Quotes

Each week you spend on generosity, you can share a new quote with students. This activity includes different quotes with short-answer questions to help student’s reflect on the meaning. I selected quotes with unique perspectives, a way to help spark discussions with your students! They are available in a variety of printable options, so you can create larger printouts for bulletin boards or class decor, or print individually for students to work on at their desks. 

Generosity Scenarios

Generosity scenarios or social stories allow students to place themselves in new situations and think about ways to be generous. These scenarios are a great way to inspire meaningful conversations in your classroom. You can display the scenarios on your bulletin board for discussion or print for independent work. 

Generosity Readers Theater

Readers theater helps students with fluency, comprehension, speaking, and confidence. It also provides real purpose for reading. I have three generosity stories that students can perform or listen to:

Pay It Forward: Students will learn about generosity by playing different members of a community. Each character receive a favor and pays it forward. Students will learn how kindness and generosity spread among people as they act out this play.

That’s How We Spell Generosity: In this story, students will each represent letters in g-e-n-e-r-o-s-i-t-y by holding signs that display their letters and discussing what their letters represent. As they spell “generosity”, students will explain different aspects of the word and teach their classmates what generosity is all about.

Generous Neighbors: In this story, a neighbor steps up to help Mr. Hanson, who is sick with the fly. It starts with one generous act, which soon spirals in more when more people find out about Mr. Hanson’s condition. As students act out this play, their classmates will see what it really means to be generous with their time, money, and talents. 

Generosity Writing Prompts

Writing prompts encourage students to write about generosity in a thoughtful way. They are a great tool to help students reflect. I have five writing prompts that encourage students to reflect and write about generosity. 

These prompts include:

• Describing a time someone showed generosity to the student. 
• Thinking about the different ways to show generosity. 
• Reflecting on a story’s moral about generosity. 
• Writing their own short story about generosity.
• Students write about balancing generosity 

I’ve also included writing paper and clip art to turn this into a published piece of writing to display in the class or hallway.

Do you love what you see?

All of these activities are available in my Character Education generosity resource, and you can also find a full bundle of all my Character Education pillars here. Each pillar is packed with meaningful lessons, materials, hands-on activities, anchor charts, bulletin boards, letters and more!