Teaching the Character Trait “Honesty”

What better way to teach your students the character trait “Honesty” then by using the story “Pinocchio?” This is a classic story about a boy named Pinocchio who is dishonest, which causes his nose to grow. In addition, because of his constant “story telling” he finds himself in a few dangerous situations. Towards the end, he learns a valuable lesson and the reason why being honest is so important!

I created this lesson to teach my students the character trait Honesty. Feel free to use it with your students as you please!

Before every lesson, I always enjoy activating prior knowledge. I usually do this with some type of visual representation (pictures or chart paper used to brainstorm thoughts or ideas) but for this lesson, I decided to place all of my students in a circle. Once in the circle, I had students pass a ball around to share. Every student was given a chance to share, but for those who where not comfortable, they were allowed to pass the ball to the next person. For students who did share, they were asked the following questions to get the conversation going:

• What does it mean to be Honest?
• Do you think it is important to remain Honest? Explain.
• Tell us a time when you were Honest about something?

After the discussion, I explained to my students what it means to be honest. I said, “Honesty means to tell the whole truth even if you may get in trouble. To tell exactly what happened and how it happened.” Next, I read the story aloud…. if you don’t have a copy of the book, have them watch both videos.

Once they had a chance to listen to the story, we had a discussion around the story. This time, instead of having each student pass the ball around in a circle, I let two or three students toss the ball to share. They were asked the following questions:

• Why was Pinocchio dishonest?
• How did Pinocchio’s lies effect his life?
• How do you think the story would be different if Pinocchio told the truth?
• Can you relate to Pinocchio? Have you ever gotten in trouble for telling a lie? Share..

For practice, I had my students work in pairs to complete the following worksheet:

After the worksheet, I had a few students share aloud.

To end the lesson, I reminded my students why it is so important to remain honest, even if they might get in trouble. I told my students, “remaining honest will allow others to see you as a responsible, trustworthy, and reliable person. It will make you feel better about yourself and will make others want to be around you. So, the next time you find yourself wanting to lie about something, think back to Pinocchio and how one lie caused him so much trouble.”

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