Honesty 1: is about telling the truth.
Aim
Objecti
ve
Intro
Looking
deeper
To consider how lying makes things difficult for everybody.
Each pupil will have the opportunity to discuss whether something is a
lie...or not.
Show a picture of a spider and its web.) Have you ever seen a spider
spin a web? How does it do it? How does it prevent itself from getting
stuck in its own web? (Discuss) The answer is that the spider spins two
kinds of thread – one is sticky, and the other isn’t. The spider first
spins the non-sticky thread to make a kind of net – then it adds the
sticky thread last of all. If it’s not careful, it will get stuck too!
Why do you think people sometimes tell lies? (Discuss – expect
answers on the lines of ‘avoiding trouble’.) Have you ever heard of
someone being ‘caught up in their own web of lies’’? It happens when
they tell a lie, and find life gets very difficult as they have to keep on
lying to try and stay out of trouble. This can be very hard, and they’re
usually caught out! Lying can be hard work!
Play the detective game. With a partner, each child should tell a short
story about something that happened to them in school over the last
week, but including a big lie that might be true. The teacher should
then nominate a volunteer to tell this story to the rest of the class,
who have to be detectives - who can spot the lie? Have them ask
questions to try and get at the truth. The volunteer should try to ‘lie
their way out of it’ if they can! (Repeat this activity if there’s time.)
This exercise shows that lies tend to break down as more people hear
about them and ask questions.
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Meditat
ion
/
Prayer
However, lying can become a bad habit if you get away with it for a
few times. What happens if people know you don’t always tell the
truth? (They don’t trust you.) What does that do? (They don’t let you
do things with them.)
In the Bible, there’s a famous saying: ‘Be sure of this – your sins will
find you out!’’ It means that when we do something wrong, it usually
gets found out in the end, or we get in worse trouble. When we do get
in trouble, it is so much easier just to own up, and to do your best not
to do it again.
(Shut eyes.)Think of a time when you did something wrong, and tried
to cover it up. Maybe you did get away with it, or maybe you didn’t –
but you know the truth. Do you need to sort this out? You may find
this prayer helpful: Father God it’s hard, but help me to be honest.
help me to tell the truth, and if I’ve told a lie, help me to sort it out.
Amen
Honesty 2: has to be practiced every day, but it can hurt!
Aim
Objective
Intro
Looking
deeper
To explore the idea that telling the truth can hurt you – but that
it’s still the best thing to do.
Each pupil will have the opportunity to discuss a moral dilemma.
Who here has had to go to the doctor because something was
hurting? Did the doctor have to poke you and ask ‘Does it
hurt...here?’ Why do they do that? (To find the part that’s sick.)
Would it make sense if the doctor prodded you where it was
hurting, but you said ‘No, it’s not hurting...honest! Why? (The
doctor needs to know what’s wrong.)
Telling the truth can be a bit like going to the doctor. Sometimes,
there may be something that’s gone wrong, and somebody is trying
to find out what’s happened...but people might keep quiet and not
tell the whole truth. Why? (To avoid trouble, to not look silly, or
because they’re scared.)
If a teacher asks you to mark your own work while the teacher
calls out the answers, what would you say to someone who quickly
changed their answers so they could collect more ticks? (The
teacher is a kind of ‘learning doctor’ – if there’s something you
don’t understand, then the teacher needs to know about it to help
you, so don’t cover it up!)
Here’s a problem for you to sort out: ‘Sarah’ has lost her pen, and
sees one like it in another child’s pencil-case. She takes it when
no-one is looking. The owner of the pencil-case finds out, tells the
teacher, and the whole class is being kept in at playtime until the
pen turns up. What do you think the teacher should do next?
Sarah is nervous, but doesn’t want to get into trouble – what do
you think she should do? (Discuss – which answers resolve the
situation best? Is just letting the pen be ‘found’ enough? Probably
not. What if she starts doing this again – what could happen
next?)
Being honest can hurt us a little – but lying can become a habit
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that will hurt us more in the end.
Meditation Telling the truth can be like taking medicine. It hurts, but if we
don’t do it, then things get worse.
/ Prayer
Father God, help me, help us all, to speak the truth today…even if
it hurts. Amen.
Honesty 3: helps people to trust each other
Aim
Objective
Intro
Looking
deeper
To explore the social benefits of mutual trust
Each pupil will have the opportunity to reflect on whether they
can be trusted.
Who thinks that they can be trusted? Who thinks teachers can
be trusted? (Stage a trust experiment with a willing volunteer.
Stand them with their back to you and a chair behind their legs,
but not touching. You stand behind the chair and hold its back
firmly, lifting it slightly above the ground. Ask them to shut their
eyes, and sit down quickly on the chair without using their hands,
when you give a verbal signal. Do they trust you enough not to
whip away the chair? Praise them for their help, either way! Tell
them not to conduct this experiment with their friends without a
responsible adult to supervise them – accidents hurt people!)
What does it mean if you say you trust someone? (You are relying
on them not to hurt you or tell you a lie.) Ask: this morning, what
were you trusted by other people to do? (Discuss.) What have
you trusted other people to do? (Discuss, then list, together.)
What would happen if you couldn’t be trusted, or if you couldn’t
trust other people to do these things? (Life might be a lot more
difficult or dangerous.)
Explain that we live in a time and place where most people can be
trusted to say and do the right thing, most of the time – but it
can change is someone lets us down. After that, we might not
feel so safe. If you don’t feel safe about something, then what
should you do? (Tell a responsible adult.) Trust helps us all to
feel a lot safer, providing everyone can be trusted! What do you
think it’s like in a class if just one person starts secretly stealing
things or messing something up? (Discuss.) If somebody starts to
mess about in the toilets when no-one is watching, then how does
that affect everybody else? If you saw someone doing it, then
what things might go though your head? (Discuss)
Explain that it only takes a few people secretly being selfish, to
mess things up for everybody else – because it’s harder then to
trust people. (eg keeping a register of toilet visits, using toilet
monitors, going in twos, etc.)
If people are honest, then everyone then feels safer, because
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then there is more trust about – so try to be trustworthy, by
being reliable and honest.
Meditation/ Trust is like glue – it holds people together. Father God, help me
to be someone who can be trusted by other people, so they feel
Prayer
safe with me. Amen.
Honesty 4: helps people to work out the truth
Aim
To explore more difficult ideas about telling the truth
Objective
Each pupil will have the opportunity to discuss a moral dilemma
Who thinks telling the truth is easy? (Ask pupils to remember what
happened in an ‘unscripted’ incident that happened in class recently,
or alternatively, ‘stage’ a weird incident with your TA at 8.55am for
pupils to witness. After discussion, ask pupils to volunteer their eyewitness accounts of what they think happened. Note the variation in
these recounts!
Explain that it isn’t always easy to work out the truth, because
different people see different things. Does that mean the different
people are lying if they say they saw something different? (No –
they might have noticed something that others didn’t.) Explain that
in a court of law, a judge will ask witnesses to stand up and say what
they saw, and then a jury of 12 normal people have to work out what
really happened, based on the evidence. It can be really hard to find
out that truth when people disagree about it – they’re not lying, they
just see things differently.
Intro
Looking
deeper
(Play a detective game. Behind a screen or round a corner, place an
unusual object. Ask 5 volunteers to, one by one, go round to see it,
and each has to say something different about it without revealing
what it is. Can pupils identify what the item is after one volunteer
has spoken? Two? More?) Explain that this shows how sometimes, we
need to ask more people about what they see, to get at the truth.
However, we still need to be as honest as possible to be helpful, even
if we disagree with other people about what the truth is!
Here’s a problem: Tracey is out in the playground, when Paul comes
running up to say ‘Emma’s been saying nasty things about you!’ then
runs away laughing. What would Tracey feel? What should she do?
(Discuss – draw out the choices Tracey faces, that she can get cross
about it, try to sort it out with Emma (if its true), or just ignore it –
but draw out the fact that Paul wasn’t being helpful at all. He wasn’t
being honest because he cared about Tracey – he was just stirring
things up. Part of telling the truth is about treating other people in a
way that shows we care for them.
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Meditation/
Prayer
Telling the truth and being honest aren’t always easy – but they’re
part of the way we can care for others and care for ourselves.
‘You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’
(Jesus)Father God, keep me honest. Keep me truthful – so I can be
free from lies. Amen.