Character Education Perseverance Teaching Activities

It’s important for students to learn the value of perseverance. If you have been looking for ways to incorporate character education seamlessly into your classroom, look no further! Read through this entire post for tons of great ideas. Empower students to be their best selves, and makes this school year different! Teaching your character education month of perseverance doesn’t have to be scary or tedious.

Need Character Education Perseverance resources?

My character education perseverance resource shown below has a variety of tools for teaching perseverance in the classroom. Check out all the ways you can promote perseverance! 

Perseverance Character Education Pacing Guide

The pacing guide organizes your entire month of perseverance focus. It will help you plan and set aside enough time to complete the curriculum with your students.

Perseverance Parent Letter

Parent letters are so effective at establishing good habits. They get families involved so they can reinforce the character education lessons at home. 

The letter included in my resource provides parents and families with tools to help them explain, model, and praise perseverance in the home. Additionally, it includes a list of books and movies that families can enjoy together! 

Perseverance Read Alouds

Read-alouds are a great way to give students shared context for discussions. I put together a list of my favorite read alouds that teach different acts of perseverance. There’s so many ways to show perseverance. These books are a great way to explore and get some good conversation from students. 

In my Character Education: Perseverance resource, I include links to each book so you can read more about it. 

Perseverance Bulletin Board

Whenever I begin a new Character Education trait, I make sure to update a bulletin board first! It’s a great way to introduce and define the concept and start class discussions. In my perseverance resource, I include everything you’ll need to introduce perseverance to students. It will create a beautiful display that you can keep up the entire month while you teach perseverance. You can add quotes for the week, social scenarios to discuss as a class, writing prompts and more! 

Perseverance Anchor Charts

Anchor charts are my favorite! They are a great reference tool for students. I have them refer to anchor charts as they respond to questions, work independently, and contribute to discussions. 

This anchor chart is a great activity to do with your students after introducing your bulletin board, or pairing with a mentor text. Because this is set up with a discussion question, I believe students will benefit the most from working together as a class. I do have a printable version included with my resource. 

Perseverance Poster

Posters are a good way to remind students about perseverance.

I’ve created eight different posters that define perseverance. Each poster has the same message, but includes different clip art that shows examples of perseverance. I make an effort to include clip art that includes multicultural children to reflect the diverse learners in our classrooms. 

Hang these posters on a bulletin board to create a display, post around your classroom or hallway, or give individual printouts for students to keep at their desks.

Perseverance Calendar

Use this calendar to challenge your students to show their perseverance skills! It is completely editable. So you can change the month, and the individual activities. You can pick and choose what makes the most sense for your students, or you can swap activities around for different days. 

Each day, I like to take a few minutes to talk about the day’s activity. We might spark a conversation about what the activity might mean, or how to complete it. Students can come up with examples as well. When finished, students can color in their square.

I have found this to be the most meaningful way for students to learn about perseverance. Learning about it is important, but putting it to action is the next step! I want my students to internalize their character education lessons. 

Perseverance Doodle Notes

These doodle pages are so cute! The doodle reflection pages are a creative way to get students to think about what perseverance is and ways they can show it. It includes reflection questions, examples, quotes, and doodles to color. It makes a great morning work activity or early-finisher task. 

In the Name of Perseverance Activity

This is a quick and super easy activity to put together for your class. Students are challenged to write their names with various twists. Students will write their names as they usually do, with their non-dominant hand, using only a couple fingers, not looking, and more! It’s a really fun activity as they come up with ways to complete the challenges and persevere. This would be a great activity for early finishers or to use as an introductory activity to the month.

Perseverance Math Challenge

Students will complete the math equations by using only the digits listed on the page. They can only use each digit once! You may find students need to work in small groups. You can also tier this activity since there are three levels! Challenge students to complete all three of the levels before the end of the month. 

Perseverance Maze

Mazes can be tough! Students will be challenged to complete the maze and reflect on their experience. Assign the mazes based on student ability or you can have students complete all three leveled mazes. It makes for great early-finisher work. Encourage students to persevere when they’re challenged, and have students reflect on the activity and what they did to persevere. 

Perseverance Quotes

For each week you spend on perseverance, you can share a new quote with students. This activity includes five perseverance quotes, three short-answer questions for student reflection, and several printing options. You can put something together for your bulletin board each week, or print individually for small group work or independent work. 

Each quote is available as a speech bubble that you can print as a poster, or you can print a version with the questions right on the page. 

Perseverance Scenarios

The social scenarios focus on perseverance. This will allow your students to place themselves in new situations and think about ways to show perseverance. These scenarios are a great way to inspire meaningful conversations in your classroom. 

You can display the scenarios on your bulletin board for class discussion or print the scenarios and allow students to work in groups or independently. 

Perseverance Readers Theater

Reader’s theater is so fun for students. There are so many benefits to using reader’s theater. It helps with fluency, comprehension, speaking, reading motivation, and confidence. It also provides a real purpose for reading. 

Included are three scripts:

Don’t Quit: Students will learn about perseverance by reading this poem about the importance of not quitting. The message of the poem is to keep trying even when it seems you might fail. Six students will take turns reading lines of this poem to help spread the message of perseverance.

The Comeback: Students will learn about perseverance by reading about an incredible comeback in a football game between the Buffalo Bills and the Houston Oilers. Students will play both reporters and members of the Buffalo Bills team who refused to give up even though the odds were stacked against them. 

The Tortoise and the Hare: In this story, students will learn about the importance of perseverance in the race between the tortoise and the hare. Even thought the tortoise is slow and quickly falls behind, he doesn’t give up. He keeps moving steadily along, refusing to get discouraged or quit. As students read this story, they’ll learn about the power of consistently moving forward toward a goal and not getting discouraged when it seems like others are making better progress. 

Perseverance Writing Prompts

Writing prompts encourage students to write about perseverance in a thoughtful and creative way. They are a perfect tool to use for student reflection. This resource has five writing prompts for students to write about perseverance. 

These include:

• Describe a time you showed perseverance.
• Imagine if you could sell perseverance and write a commercial.
• Giving advice to a friend who is struggling to persevere towards a goal.
• A short story about perseverance.
• Writing a short story about a boy who must learn to persevere. 

I also include printable bulletin board headings. You can choose to display the writing pages in your classroom, and students can “publish” their work with fancy paper and included clip art images. 

The Character Education perseverance resource shown above is just a small part of my larger Character Education or Social Emotional Learning (SEL) Curriculum bundle. You can use it for the entire year!

All of the individual pillars (kindness, respect, responsibility, courage, cooperation, empathy, generosity, perseverance, friendship, and integrity) are covered in this bundle. It is filled with meaningful lessons, materials, hands-on activities, anchor charts and bulletins and more!