Twenty Ideas for Promoting Good Manners
1. Students write and publish their own books of good manners. These books
emphasize values, respect for others, and integrity in addition to proper
behavior in different social situations. The books might be called, “Manners for
Grade ___ Students,” “Manners is our Favorite Subject,” or “We Love Good Manners.”
2. Each student completes a few HyperCard stack pages on a specific area of manners.
The pages are merged to create a class stack about good manners.
3. Students create posters and banners about manners.
4. Students write thank you letters to a guest speaker or for a gift.
5. Students make an outline about good manners at the theater, in the home, at a
meal, at a party, etc.
6. Students create stories about problems with manners. These stories should be the
type which end but are not finished. The stories are printed and distributed for
the class to read and role play the situations.
7. Students create party invitations, menus for a party, favors for a party, etc.
8. Students write a letter to their grandparents asking them what were the important manners when they were kids.
9. Students practice good manners during use of telecommunications.
10. Students make a data base which includes the titles, names, street addresses,
cities, states, and zip codes of their parents. They use this data base to create
address labels. The labels are attached to letters inviting the parents to a special
program about good manners.
11. Students write crazy stories about mealtime disasters. The stories are saved and
printed. Other students read the stories, and then write their suggestions about
how the mealtime disasters could have been averted.
12. Students create HyperCard stacks or computer presentations on proper use of
utensils at meals.
13. They scan photos or drawings of the utensils and place the scanned pictures into
the stack.
14. Students create a classroom newspaper on manners.
15. Students become playwrights as they write plays about good manners to use during
sports and recess.
16. Students use graphics and sound to demonstrate how to make introductions.
17. Students write articles to the newspaper about their studies of good manners.
18. Students take digital pictures of children using good manners. They add text and
publish posters of good manners.
19. Students make up brief dramas about use of good manners. They put these on
videotape and then into computer presentations.
20. Students brainstorm all the good manners that are important in the classroom, on the playground, in the community, at home, etc. and write them on 3×5 cards and place them in a container. Teacher shakes the cards up, then has a student pick one of the cards to model for a week. NOTE: You might want to do a practice run to model the various manners before you do the real thing!
– Gene Bedley