Positive Mistakes!

The school I am currently at uses the Character Counts! Program for our Character Education program. I found some excellent lesson ideas from the site and one of my favorites is used to teach the Responsibility Pillar (Our Pillar of the Month for November).

I used this lesson under "Positive Mistakes (4-6)" with my second graders in a Classroom Guidance lesson and I feel they really enjoyed it! It was appropriate for their level and we were really able to extend the lesson into some valuable discussions. I was very impressed with how engaged and creative they were!


With the lesson comes a free worksheet. The worksheet is pretty much a plain sheet of paper with a big black mark in the middle (to represent a mistake). Students then turn the mistake into something beautiful. We focus on the importance of fixing our mistakes and being responsible for our actions. I followed the lesson plan for the most part except I used the book, "Harriet and the Garden" By Nancy Carlson .

I gave the students a lot of freedom and allowed them to turn their paper around and be creative! Here are some of their results!

"Underwear" 

"Heel"

"Red Pear" 

"Pirate Ship"

"Dinosaur" 

"Tooth"

I was super impressed! What are some lessons you have used to teacher Responsibility?