The importance of teaching values to young learners

Katharine Scott
Two Young children high fiving one another

Values in educationÌý

The long years children spend at school are not only about acquiring key knowledge and skills. At school, children also learn to work together, share, exchange opinions, disagree, choose fairly, and so on. We could call these abilities social skills as they help children live and flourish in a wider community than their family circle.

Social skills are not necessarily the same as social values. Children acquire social skills from all kinds of settings. The tools they use to resolve problems will often come from examples. In the playground, children observe each other and notice behavior. They realize what is acceptable to the other children and which strategies are successful. Some of the things they observe will not reflect healthy social values.Ìý

Part of a school’s mission is to help children learn social skills firmly based on a shared set of values. Many schools recognize this and have a program for education in values.Ìý

What values are we talking about?Ìý

Labeling is always tricky when dealing with an abstract concept such as social values. General ideas include:

  • living in a community, collaborating together
  • respecting others in all of human diversity
  • caring for the environment and the surroundings
  • having a sense of self-worth.

At the root of these values are ethical considerations. While it may seem that primary education is too early for ethics, children from a very young age do have a sense of fairness and a sense of honesty. This doesn’t mean that children never lie or behave unfairly. Of course they do! But from about three years old, children know that this behavior is not correct, and they complain when they come across it in others.Ìý

In the school context, social values are too often reduced to a set of school rules and regulations. Typical examples are:

  • 'Don't be late!'
  • 'Wait your turn!'
  • 'Pick up your rubbish!'
  • 'Don't invent unkind nicknames'.

While all these statements reflect important social values, if we don’t discuss them with the children, the reasoning behind each statement gets lost. They become boring school rules. And we all know that it can be fun to break school rules if you can get away with it. These regulations are not enough to represent an education in values.

School strategies

At a school level, successful programs often focus on a specific area of a values syllabus. These programs involve all members of a school community: students, teachers, parents, and administrative staff.Ìý

Here are some examples of school programs:

Caring for the environment

Interest in ecology and climate change has led many schools to implement programs focused on respect for the environment and other ecological issues. Suitable activities could include:

  • a system of recycling
  • a vegetable garden
  • initiatives for transforming to renewable energy
  • a second-hand bookstore.

Anti-bullying programs

AsÌý,Ìýmany schools have anti-bullying policies to deal with bullying incidents. However, the most effective programs also have training sessions for teachers and a continuous program for the children to help them identify bullying behavior. Activities include:

  • empathy activities to understand different points of view
  • activities to develop peer responsibility about bullying
  • activities aimed at increasing children’s sense of self-worth.

Anti-racism programsÌý

Combating negative racial stereotypes has, until recently, relied mainly on individual teacher initiatives. However, as racial stereotypes are constructed in society, it would be useful to have a school-wide program. This could include:

  • materials focusing on the achievements of ethnic minorities
  • school talks from members of ethnic minority communitiesÌý
  • empathy activities to understand the difficulties of marginalized groups.
  • study of the culture and history of ethnic minorities.

As children learn from observed behavior, it’s important that everyone in the school community acts consistently with the values in the program.

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    6 tips for planning your first English classes

    By Nicole Kyriacou

    You are nervous, yet excited. You want to appear relaxed and fun, but still be taken seriously. Most of all, you are keen to make an excellent first impression.

    With all that in mind - planning your first English classes of the year can be a daunting experience.

    Here are six things to consider when planning your first classes:

    1. Set clear aims

    Whether you are teaching young learners, teenagers or adults, it’s important you discuss the aims and objectives of the course from day one. You’ll need to learn more about your students' needs to do this. Why are they learning English? Do they want to prepare for an official exam? What activities do they enjoy? What things do they need to improve the most?

    The way you do this will depend on the age of your learners. For example, with adults and teens, you could get them to interview each other and write a report about what they found out. With younger children, do a survey they can complete using smiley faces.

    2. Find out students’ interests

    Although you should understand your students' needs and why they want to learn English - to help make your classes relevant and engaging - you should also discover what they enjoy doing outside of class.

    To do this, get students to write mini bios you can stick around the classroom. Or have them prepare presentations where they share something they are passionate about with the rest of the class - using coursebooks. As a class, go through the contents page, vote on which topics students find most interesting, and start with those.

    3. Break the ice

    You want your first class to be fun so that students are motivated, and associate English language learning with something they can enjoy. Ice-breakers can also be an excellent way to get to know each other and learn about your students' current level of English.

    Activities where students have to ask each other questions work well.

    4. Provide a comfortable environment

    Young learners and teenagers tend to be shy at the start of a course - especially if they don’t know each other. Develop a rapport and break down boundaries by including team-building activities in your first class.ÌýYour aim is to have all the students feeling more comfortable with each other before the end of the lesson so that there are no awkward silences in future lessons.

    5. Manage expectations

    Managing expectations is an essential part of a teacher's job. Make sure in the first class you are clear about what you expect from your students and what they can expect from you.

    Have students brainstorm the rules for the class and then make a big poster or ‘class contract’ which all students have to sign. Display the poster on the wall so you can always refer to it if someone misbehaves.

    Try to keep the rules as positive as possible. Instead of writing: 'Don’t speak your first language', write: 'Try to always speak English and ask if you don’t know a word'. If you are feeling really brave, you can even get your students to devise a list of rules for you which you can display on the wall next to theirs.

    6. Make it challenging

    It’s great making your first lesson fun - but there’s nothing more motivating than leaving a new class and feeling like you’ve made a good decision and you are going to learn lots (and you aren’t wasting your time or money). This is especially important for adult learners.

    So, as well as getting to know each other and finding out their needs, teach them something new. This could be 10 new pieces of vocabulary, how to structure a letter or report, or a list of resources they can use at home to practice their English.