Each year, students learn math, social studies, reading, and science. Additionally, they learn about different art techniques, ways to stay healthy, and how much fun music is. However, students also learn more than the core subjects and specials. They learn how to interact with classmates and adults. Therefore, showcasing students is so important as it allows everyone to see how unique and courageous each person is. In order to do this, the Character Trait Posters are the perfect way to teach students about individuality.
What is Character Education?
Schools focus on educating the whole child. Thus, there is a large focus on teaching students to interact with members of society. Oftentimes, students struggle with this because so much conversation happens behind a screen. Therefore, students need practice on how to treat everyone with respect even when there are differing opinions. With a focus on character education, students learn to regulate feelings, emotions, thoughts, and actions when engaging in discussions. Truly, character education is about showcasing respect, honesty, kindness, responsibility, and citizenship.
Differences Between Character Education and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)
Many times, people will assume that character education and social-emotional learning are the same things. However, there are distinct differences between the two. Character education focuses on teaching students to be upstanding citizens within the school and community. Thus, students learn about responsibility, respect, and honesty. Social-Emotional Learning focuses on self-awareness and self-management in order to understand and manage emotions. Additionally, it focuses on social awareness and relationship skills. Here, students learn how to empathize with others while maintaining positive relationships. Ultimately, character education and social-emotional learning create a caring and positive environment.
Character Trait Posters with Positive Reinforcement
In order for students to develop citizenship skills, they first need to learn what they are. Additionally, they need time to practice communicating with others on a variety of topics. By doing this, they may have disagreements but will work on kindness and respect while discussing. In many ways, this time provides for positive reinforcement in the classroom. Students are in a safe place to work on building traits and improving interpersonal skills. Therefore, students can be rewarded by developing positive friendships and feeling confident to talk to anyone around them. Truly, positive reinforcement does not always require candy. Instead, it can come in the form of gaining new skills, pride, and confidence in interacting with others.
In order to help show positive reinforcement, the Character Trait Posters can help promote praise and growth. For instance, each week can focus on different traits. Then, students can share how they demonstrated the focus traits. Or, they can explain how they saw a classmate or family member demonstrate that trait. Also, the posters can be displayed around the room in order to provide reminders on how to be kind, responsible classmates.
While it may sound easy to tell someone to be caring, determined, and focused, this is not the case for everyone. Ultimately, each student goes through different struggles at home and has different stressors in life. Thus, it is vital to be patient with students and teach them how to be positive community members. As they get older, they will be so proud to showcase the amazing people they are!
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