In today’s online world, respect has seemed to fall by the wayside, especially on social media platforms. Therefore, it’s more important than ever before to teach kids about respect in all facets of life. The activities below are helpful in developing respectful classroom expectations, creating a positive classroom climate, and fostering a classroom dialogue about the importance of respect. Elementary-aged students will benefit from practicing respectful language and actions using these 37 wonderful activities.
1. What Is Respect? Activity
This learning activity focuses on the definition of respect. Students will explore what they know about respect based on previous knowledge. They will also discuss different causes and effects of respectful and disrespectful situations to extend their knowledge of the definition. This is a fantastic lesson to add to a character education unit.
Learn more: Talking Tree Books
2. Host a Respectful Debate
Hosting debates are a great opportunity for kids to learn how to disagree with each other in a respectful manner. In this lesson, kids first identify the rules of respectful conversation, then they will apply the rules to a debate topic like “which is the best season?”.
Learn more: Think, Grow, Giggle
3. Playing Card Hierarchy Lesson
This activity is a great way for students to visualize how popularity can impact how we treat others. The impactful part of this activity is the discussion that emerges after the demonstration about how popularity impacts respect for one another.
Learn more: Character Counts
4. Sometimes You’re a Caterpillar
This social-emotional learning activity uses an animated video to teach kids about the difference among people. This video encourages kids to think about how they view one another and respect others’ opinions.
Learn more: Chesca Leigh
5. $1 or 100 Pennies? Activity
Students will brainstorm the similarities and differences between a dollar bill and 100 pennies. After students process the similarities and differences, they will then discuss how both are different at first, but then the same in the end. Then they will extend the activity to how we respect each other.
Learn more: Character Counts
6. R-E-S-P-E-C-T Art Group Activity
This art extension activity divides the class into groups to focus on each of the letters of R-E-S-P-E-C-T. They then have to think of as many examples of respect that start with that letter as they can and create a collage to display and present to the class.
Learn more: Overcoming Obstacles
7. Respect Read-A-Loud
This list of books about respect is perfect to use for read-aloud time each day during a respected unit. Each book focuses on a different element of respect like respect for learning and respect for property.
Learn more: Teach, Create, Motivate
8. “Caught Ya” Slips
These slips can be used throughout the school year or during a single unit on respect. Students can give “caught ya” slips to peers any time they witness a student engaging in a respectful act. This encourages respectful engagement within the classroom.
Learn more: Teach, Create, Motivate
9. Sing the “It’s All About Respect” Song
This song is great, especially for lower elementary students. The song teaches respect skills and helps kids remember how and when to be respectful. This classroom activity is a great way to start and/or end each day.
Learn more: Narwhals and Waterfalls
10. Feelings Temperature Activity
This social-emotional learning activity is a great way to teach kids about how our actions are connected to our emotions and others’ emotions as well. This character education activity helps students to visualize empathy and encourages mutual respect among peers.
Learn more: Operation Respect
11. The Torn Heart Activity
The torn heart activity is another SEL activity that helps develop an awareness of respect. This lesson has students listen to a story and identify put-downs. As the put-downs are identified they will see what happens to the heart.
Learn more: Share My Lesson
12. Walk in Another’s Shoes Activity
This lesson encourages students to see multiple perspectives in a story. Students will recall Little Red Riding Hood, then they will hear the story from the wolf’s perspective. After they hear the wolf’s perspective, they will have a classroom discussion about walking in someone else’s shoes before passing judgment.
Learn more: Operation Respect
13. Exploring Stereotypes Lesson
As we know, stereotypes can cause negative self-perception as well as disrespectful behavior among different populations. This lesson for elementary students asks kids to think about what they “know” about teenagers. Then, they explore those stereotypes and think about the disrespectful nature of stereotypes.
Learn more: Morning Side Center
14. Upon the Clouds of Equality Lesson
This is another lesson that helps kids to see how inequality and disrespectful treatment of others who are different than us can be hurtful. Students will read Martin’s Big Words and participate in a lesson that demonstrates the negative impacts of inequality.
Learn more: One World One Heart Beating
15. What Can We Learn From a Box of Crayons?
This coloring activity uses the book The Crayon Box That Talked to teach students about the concepts of diversity and acceptance. Students will then complete their own coloring activity that celebrates differences. This is a great emotional literacy lesson.
Learn more: One World One Heart Beating
16. Tapestry Lesson
This lesson focuses on helping kids think about their own identities and how they fit into a culturally diverse world. This mini-unit has three lessons that focus on identifying different religions, thinking about different perspectives, and learning about the freedom of belief.
Learn more: Learning for Justice
17. Diversity Makes Us Smile Lesson
This lesson focuses on developing positive vocabulary to describe the different people and cultures around us. Additionally, this lesson provides hands-on and mindful activities that encourage students to think about why they smile and how they can make others smile.
Learn more: Embracing Our Differences
18. Help Others Bloom Lesson
This artistic lesson helps children think about how they can make others feel included and happy by using respectful language. Students will use movement, hands-on activities, and art to think about how they can help others “bloom”. This is a great lesson to teach empathy.
Learn more: Embracing Our Differences
19. Respect “I Will” Statements
This crafty activity on respect helps students think about the actions they can take to be respectful to themselves, each other, and their families. Students will create an “I Will” mobile with several “I Will” statements.
Learn more: Meaningful Mama
20. Heart Paper Chain
The heart paper chain activity is the perfect artwork to help kids visualize the power of kindness and respect and how kindness and respect can spread. Students will create their own hearts to add to the chain. Then, the chain can be displayed in the classroom or even throughout the school.
Learn more: Art with Mrs. Nguyen
21. Conversation Starters
Conversation starters are a classic way to teach children about respect and how to have respectful conversations. Conversation starters help to get kids started before continuing the conversation on their own.
Learn more: Dr. Robyn
22. Respect Word Rings
Words rings are another classic activity at the elementary school level. In this activity, students will create a word ring for the character trait RESPECT that includes quotes, definitions, synonyms, and visualizations. Kids will love creating the different pages of the ring.
Learn more: Meaningful Mama
23. Use Movies to Teach
As teachers know, movies can be a powerful tool in the classroom with proper instruction and discussion. This list of movies focuses on the ideas behind respect. This list of respected movies can be incorporated into daily lessons and discussions.
Learn more: Teach with Movies
24. Respect: It’s For the Birds Lesson
The goal of this lesson is to help students define respect and provide examples of how they can show respect to the people, places, and things around them. This lesson includes worksheets and videos to help students learn about the meaning of respect.
Learn more: Love for the Elementary Counselor
25. Hero vs. Villain Activity
This simple lesson encourages students to think about the good and bad attributes that contribute to their identity. This activity encourages students to self-reflect, which is a key aspect of fostering respectful behavior.
Learn more: Elementary School Counseling
26. Enemy Pie Activity
Enemy Pie is a great book to help teach students about friendship. The lesson focuses on teaching kids about the difference between enemies and friends and how they can differentiate between the two types of relationships. This book helps students to see that sometimes our enemies aren’t enemies at all.
Learn more: Teaching Made Practical
27. Kindness Coins
Kindness coins are a great way to spread positivity in a school setting. The coins are linked to a website. Your school can buy the coins and when a student receives a coin, they can go on the website and log the act of kindness. It’s a great movement to spread kindness.
Learn more: Kindness Coins
28. Actions and Consequences
This is a fantastic lesson that helps children to see that their actions can have negative and/or positive consequences. The most important element of this lesson, however, is that it helps kids realize that their words can have negative consequences on other people.
Learn more: YouTube
29. Identity and Characteristics
This artful lesson uses the leaves of a flower to help students think about the different aspects of their identity. These flowers, once finished, can be displayed around the classroom so students can visualize the differences and similarities between their classmates.
Learn more: GLSEN
30. Developing Empathy
This lesson uses role-play to help children learn about empathy- a key lesson in respect. Kids will work in groups and use scripts to begin to understand how words and actions can affect other people’s feelings.
Learn more: Good Start
31. Teach Donkey Activity
This drama-based lesson gets kids up and moving and uses their bodies to depict important vocabulary words and concepts. The students will make their own visual representations of vocabulary words.
Learn more: DBI Network
32. Vote With Your Feet Activity
This classic activity has students respond to yes/no/maybe questions using their bodies and moving from one side of the room to the other. The teacher will ask students questions about respect and then kids will move between the yes and no side of the room.
Learn more: DBI Network
33. Rules of Respect Mobile
This is an awesome activity to reflect on the idea of mutual respect in the classroom and/or household. Students will make a mobile that demonstrates different rules of respect in specific environments.
Learn more: Kids of Integrity
34. Egg Toss Demonstration
This tactile and visual activity helps kids develop an awareness of respect and how to model it. The eggs represent the fragility of people’s feelings and how, like with an egg, we have to be careful and gentle in how we handle it.
Learn more: Kids of Integrity
35. Mouldy Attitudes Science Experiment
This science activity is another visual demonstration of how negative words can hurt people’s feelings. The bread represents our ego and the mold represents how negativity can hurt our feelings and make us feel bad about ourselves.
Learn more: Kids of Integrity
36. Practice Sending Respectful Emails
In today’s digital classroom, learning about digital citizenship is a key aspect of respect. In this activity, students will learn how to show respect to people in an email. This is also a good activity to set classroom expectations for communication with adults, especially teachers.
Learn more: Common Sense Media
37. Practice Respectful Manners
This activity helps students to practice respectful manners in common situations like dinner time. Manners are a key aspect of respect and practicing manners helps students to internalize respectful behavior.
Learn more: Child Fun
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