7 Activities for teaching respect in the classroom

In this guide

• Why teach respect? 
• A structured approach to teaching respect
  • Define it
  • Role playing
  • Model the behavior
• Teaching respect 
• Developing self-respect
  • Journaling
  • Self-portrait activity
• Building respect for others
  • Articles & stories
  • Who are you?
• Further reading

Whether in your classroom, online, or in a park, the world is full of diverse people with different perspectives. Sometimes, those world views may clash with our own, or we simply do not understand them. This is where respect can come in. Teaching children and teenagers to understand respect is a lifelong skill that can help your students navigate a complex world. 

Why teach respect? 

Respect is a deep topic that can take many lessons to understand and develop fully. You can see lessons about respect from an elementary school classroom to a professional development course in your workplace. It is a skill we are constantly building and improving. 

Understanding respect is a skill that will benefit your students for a lifetime, but it isn’t just about being polite. It encompasses showing respect to each other and ourselves. In this article, we will look at different activities you can use to teach respect as a concept, develop self-respect, and respect others.

A structured approach to teaching respect

Although there are three categories we can look at when teaching respect, there is a standard structure we can use for all of them. This is: 

1. Define it
2. Use role-playing to see real scenarios in action 
3. Model the behavior and continuously observe it

1) Define it 

No matter what type of respect you teach, you always want to define it to your students first. Some concepts may be new vocabulary for them, and giving them the definitions will help them develop their understanding. Never assume that your students come to you with this knowledge!

In a lesson on respect, you may write the word on the board and ask students to share what they know about it. This lets you understand what prior knowledge students already have on the topic, and it can easily be accomplished using a cooperative learning strategy like think-pair-share. Once students shared their ideas, I liked to go further and ask them what something looks, sounds, and feels like when they see that word in action. For respect, you may ask, “What does it sound like when a student respects someone else? What do you think that student feels like when being respected?” This creates a model that students can use when revisiting the concept of respect throughout the year.

It is also essential to define what it isn’t. I would always ask students to tell me what disrespect looks like, sounds like, and feels like. They often had ample responses to this because they had witnessed it many times throughout their lives. 

When defining behaviors, particularly ones like respect, it is essential for students to understand what it is and isn’t. This allows students to identify respect and disrespect in real-life situations.

2) Role playing 

Concepts are great, but what does respect look like in action? This is where role-playing can help. Role plays create opportunities for students to act out scenarios in which they may need to practice a skill. This is a great way to help students practice their skills in real-life situations.

For a role-play to be effective, you must clearly define the situation and think of the skill you want your students to practice. Is it an example where the student needs to show respect in a challenging environment? Is it an example where a student is disrespected and another student is involved? 

One part of our school day was social-emotional learning, during which we focused on a different life skill during each lesson. Giving students opportunities to practice together in a safe environment and asking questions as we worked through the scenarios was the key to the success of this program. 

When I created those role-playing scenarios, I first thought of what skill I wanted my students to practice. The skill needed to be directly related to the definitions they completed earlier. For example, if your students defined respect in terms of what it looks like, sounds like, and feels like, it’s a good idea to have them role-play a situation in which they need to remain respectful in an intense situation. This allows them to model what respect looks like, sounds like, and feels like in a situation similar to what they may encounter with their peers.

I also like to define the environment where the scenario will happen. Is it in the classroom? At home? Online? All these environments can create a unique and different situation. Putting the scenario in the environmental context allows the students to practice the skill in multiple places. 

How you structure the role-play is up to you. Once my students got used to role-playing, I would challenge them to create their own scenarios, which they enjoyed. Letting students create their role plays allowed them to take the story into their own hands and practice skills in environments like the ones they experienced. For some students, practicing a role-play in front of the class may feel overwhelming. There are ways to modify the role play to meet these students where they are, such as performing a jigsaw structure in which they only need to role-play in front of a small number of their peers.

Students can always participate in creating their role plays. You can ask these students to be your supporting writer, helping you think of role plays for the rest of the class. After a role play, instead of asking for students to raise their hands to share their thoughts on the activity, you can also have students write them down as a reflection activity that is shared at the end of class. 

Maybe you are short on time, and the idea of an extended role-play session doesn’t work for your schedule. Technology can come in handy for this. ClickView has plenty of video content focusing on respect, and you can find videos or clips from movies that showcase respect on our AU and UK platforms. You can watch these clips and then discuss with students how respect was shown in each clip.

3) Model and continuously observe respect 

As students get older, they will definitely realize which adults actively model respect and which ones don’t! After defining respect and giving students time to practice it, you must model and continuously observe it. At the middle and high school levels, I can guarantee your students will call you out when you don’t practice what you preach! I took pride in doing my best to model what I wanted to see from my students, but there were times when they recognized that I needed to improve in a certain area.

Your students will look to you as an example every day. It is important that you model the behaviors you want to see in them. For example, if you want a student to model respectful behavior, you must also model it to your students. If you want your students to listen to each other, you need to listen to your students. This may seem easy to understand, but as adults, we often feel overwhelmed and too busy to actively listen to our students. They may feel the same way, and if we are asking them to listen and show respect, we can do the same for our students. 

As well as modeling, educators should continuously observe the behaviors they want to see in the classroom. Observing and calling out these behaviors reinforces the type of classroom you are trying to create. You can use techniques like positive narration, reward systems, and others to share your observations with students. 

I am a fan of positive narration, as it allows you to reinforce the positive behaviors you want to see in students. In my middle school classroom, we would often engage in fun competitions like the egg drop project in which each student built a device to protect a raw egg when dropped from a balcony. Regardless of the fact that it was a competition, I acknowledged students who cheered on their competitors because it reinforced real-life respect.

The following sections will look at possible activities you can use to teach the three categories of respect: teaching respect (as a concept), developing self-respect, and building respect for others. The aim is for all the activities to be used in multiple grade levels, where there should be differentiation based on age. You will see options for modifications.

Teaching respect 

Sometimes, the main lesson you want to get across to students is what respect is as a concept. One activity you can use is to find active examples as a way of applying the skill. 

You should introduce respect using the structure from earlier: define it, role play, and then model it. Once you have done this, you can ask students to find examples of respect in the real world. This could involve students finding examples from TV shows, articles, or music. You can divide students into groups and give them time to identify these examples. Make sure to give them time to share as well. The Disney movie Inside Out is a fun movie with different examples of respect.

Developing self respect 

Respect doesn’t only look outwards; it also looks inward to help students understand how they can respect themselves. Self-respect focuses on loving yourself and treating yourself with care. Everyone has different ways of showing self-respect, so the activities below are ways to start implementing reflective practices to help your students. 

4) Journaling

A fun way to help students understand themselves and reflect on that understanding is by journaling. You can utilize daily or weekly journaling prompts that focus on a topic that asks students to think about what they value and how those values play out in their lives. I used to provide bell work prompts at the beginning of class in which students would reflect on an SEL topic, followed by a class discussion.

Some journaling prompts to get started:

1. How would your biggest fan describe you? 
2. What are three things you like about yourself? 
3. What are some things you’re good at, and how do you know?

Depending on your age group, you can dive deeper into these topics for older students who may be more critical of themselves. 

1. What does it sound like when you speak to yourself in your head?
2. Do you hold preconceptions about yourself? Are any of these negative? What started this negative thought, and how can you change it to a positive thought? 
3. What are your core values? What can you do to live more closely to those values? 

If you struggle to think of journaling topics, googling “self-esteem journaling topics” is a great way to start brainstorming! 

You may have students who find journaling difficult or need modifications to participate. You can use the same journaling prompts but ask students to do something different. Artistic students can be asked to draw a picture scene or depict the emotion from the prompt. If a student struggles with writing, the activity could be a peer-to-peer discussion or recording of their responses. 

If you are interested in other journaling apps, Common Sense Media lists journaling apps you can use in your classroom.

5) Self-portrait activity

Another way to have students reflect on themselves is through art! Asking students to create a self-portrait of themselves is an excellent way to look inward. The focus should be on something other than the physical aspects of themselves.

For example, in an elementary classroom, you may ask students to draw a self-portrait that shows examples of the things they love. Students may draw themselves with their families, wearing their favorite team’s shirt, or playing with their dog. 

For older students, you can be more abstract. You can ask students to draw a self-portrait reflecting who they are and showing their values. A student could draw an abstract picture of their face with waves in the background or use fire for imagery. 

A fun way to showcase work is to have a gallery walk. If students feel comfortable sharing their work, you can hang the art around the classroom, and students can walk around to observe. Make sure each student also titles their work.

Building respect for others 

 The last topic we will discuss is building respect for others. We live in a complex world with many different perspectives, and a student’s ability to understand these perspectives and respect others can help them navigate this complexity. 

You can build respect for others with your students in several ways. 

6) Articles and stories

Reading news articles or books exemplifying respect for others is a great way to frame the conversation and simultaneously hear an exciting story. Students can read many books at different grade levels alone or together to build respect for others. 

For elementary students, you may pick a short story to read, or have a theme of the week where you read the book and discuss it over several days. Online read-alouds can support diverse groups and provide opportunities for students to engage with stories in different ways. For older students, you may pick a section of a book that students read and discuss, or you can have students complete a full novel with discussion checkpoints at various stages of the book.

7) Who are you? 

An activity to try with your students is “Who are you?”

Ask the students to answer “Who are you?” four times with a one-word answer. After students write down their responses, place them in small groups to share their words. What do they notice? When students come back, ask them if they all had the same responses in the same order. Why did some students pick the order they did for their responses? Does that first response define who that student is as a person? 

Everyone has different ways of identifying themselves. Some of these identities will be similar to our own. Others may be different. However, we are all humans, no matter our identities. 

For older students, discuss how society views these different identities. Are some perceived as “good” or “bad,” and why is that so? What can we do to compare potentially negative perceptions of an identity?

Further reading

Respect is a significant topic with different approaches and frameworks for teaching and developing respect in students. One example is CASEL’s Social Emotional Learning (SEL). You can use this framework in your classroom to help your students develop personally and emotionally.

References 

1. Burns, M. (2019). Book Creator app. [online] Book Creator app. Available at: https://bookcreator.com/.
2. Commonsensemedia.org. (2012). Journal Apps, Online Diaries, and Digital Scrapbooks. [online] Available at: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/lists/journal-apps-online.
3. Inspiring Inventiveness OpalSchool.org Gallery Walk Gallery Walk. (n.d.). Available at: https://pz.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/Gallery-Walk.pdf.
4. Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) (2022). Fundamentals of SEL. [online] CASEL. Available at: https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/.