Character Education Objective:
- Students will discuss, based their experience, the impact of messes on their lives, minds, and community.
Content Goal
- Students will explore ways to demonstrate responsibility by cleaning and organizing their space.
Language Goal:
- Students will share ideas about ways to clean and organize their lives to demonstrate they are responsible citizens of their school, home, and community.
Purpose:
April showers bring May flowers. Spring cleaning and a transition into the coming months of summer is a great opportunity to help students recognize opportunities to show responsibility by cleaning their home, school, and community. Students can demonstrate they are responsible by finding places to clean.
Lesson:
Stand next to the image that best represents your level of clean. (5 minutes).
(Picture 1, Picture 2, Picture 3, Picture 4, Picture 5, Picture 6)
- In your bedroom
- In your locker
- In your school
- In your car (HS)
- In your mind
Discuss 1 or 2 with an elbow partner (3 minutes)
- How does clutter and being messy cause problems in people’s lives?
- How have you struggled with clutter in your mind, home, locker, and life throughout this year?
- Rate yourself from 1 (low) to 5 (high) on being responsible and caring for the spaces in your life?
Discuss whole group (3 minutes)
- What does it mean to be responsible?
- How can being cluttered or having a messy room/locker/backpack or mind show your level of responsibility?
Productive Group Work (7 minutes)
Students read and discuss the Psychology of a Messy Room article.
https://www.verywellmind.com/psychology-of-a-messy-room-4171244
- How does disorganization or messy spaces make you feel?
- What does the article say about the psychology of a messy room?
- How can we be more responsible by decluttering/cleaning?
- What is one space you are going to clean this week/month?
Family Connection
- Tech Support
- Download a Housecleaning APP
- Create a chore list in COZI or on a shared note or Google Drive document
- Pillar Time
- Create a chore list as a family and post it in a prominent place
- Go through any storage items and determine if you have used it in the last year, and donate it if not
- Pick up garbage in the neighborhood as a family
- Dinner Discussion
- What does it mean to be responsible in your family?
- What is one space in your life that needs to be cleaned?
- How does keeping an area clean and organized show you are responsible?
Learn more about character education.