Lesson 6 — Living by a Value I Care About

Summary

Learners move from naming values to living them. They study a worked example of a value turned into a real action, then write or draw a real (or imagined) moment when they lived by fairness, honesty, or kindness — and set a small “next time I will” commitment. The central idea: a value is proven by what a person does, not just what they say.

Objectives

• Name values they care about, such as fairness, honesty, and kindness, and give an example of living by one. (D01.S2.05.01)

Connection

A value you only say is like a seed you never plant. A value you live by is the seed growing — the fair share you give, the true word you speak, the help you offer. Whether you return a dropped coin purse, tell the truth about a broken cup, or sit with a lonely newcomer, the small deed is the value made real. All over the world, a person’s values are read not from their words but from their choices and actions.

Materials

• Living-by-a-value poster
• Blank “living by a value” page
• Pencils and crayons

Preparation

• Print or draw the living-by-a-value poster (a value paired with a real scene of acting on it).
• Copy a “living by a value” page for each learner.
• Arrange a circle and space for paired role-play.

Facilitator note

This lesson is written to the learner (“you”). The idea to land is that a value is shown in action, and that even a small deed counts — this protects learners from the perfectionism of “I must do something big to matter.” Model the worked example first (Kirschner, Sweller & Clark, 2006): value → choice → action. Let learners write an imagined example if a real one is hard to recall — the skill is connecting value to deed, not confessing a deed. Never grade whose example is “more virtuous”; celebrate each value lived, however small. See docs/philosophy.md §8 on mastery, not ranking.

Procedure

1. Gather (5 min). Last time you named the values you care about. Today the harder, truer question: what does it look like to live by one?
2. Watch a value turn into action (10 min). Look at the poster. Here is a worked example. Value: honesty. Choice: a child finds a dropped coin purse on the path. Action: the child runs it back to the person who dropped it, saying, “This is yours.” The value was never said out loud — it was done. That is living by a value.
3. Practice matching (10 min). In pairs, act out a tiny scene of living by one value — fairness, honesty, or kindness. Let your partner guess which value you showed. Notice: the value shows up in the doing.
4. Your own example (15 min). On your page, write or draw the value you chose, and one real (or imagined) moment you lived by it. Then finish this line: “Next time I will…” — one small, doable way to live that value again soon.
5. Close (5 min). A value is not a poster on a wall; it is a choice you make again and again. Each small deed is you, becoming the person you mean to be.

Differentiation

• Support: Offer three illustrated “value in action” scenes to choose from and label; use a sentence starter for the commitment (“Next time I will ___”).
• Extension: Write two examples — one easy and one hard — and name what made the hard one hard, and what helped you still do it.

Assessment

• Formative (observation): Can the learner connect a value to a concrete example of acting on it, and state one small next step?
• Self-check: The learner checks that their example is a real action, not only a word, and that their “next time” step is small enough to actually do.

Home connection

Choose one value and do one small, real deed today — then tell someone at home what you did and which value it lived.

Resources

• Explicit modeling before independent practice supports novice learners (Kirschner, Sweller & Clark, 2006). Values-in-action connect to CASEL’s responsible-decision-making competency: https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/