Personal development is FINALLY making its way into more UK schools, especially since Ofsted's most recent updates where they announced this will be a new focus for inspections. Character Education has been around globally for a while, but it's more important than ever that we all do our best to bring this into our classroom if we haven't already - not because of inspections, but because our students need it.

If you're new to teaching character education or personal development, it can be overwhelming at first to know where to start. So hopefully this article will give you some ideas for how you can easily implement this fundamental quality into your day.

If you've never heard of Personal Development or Character Education, you can first check out this article which explains all you need know about it and why your students need it.

Once you're clear on what it is and why you want to teach it, here are some simple ways you can implement personal development into your classroom, or across the whole school:

1. The easiest way I found to begin with, is by slotting a short activity into your mornings: those first few minutes of the day when everyone is settling in are ideal. (You might call it tutor time / morning meeting / home room / form time / advisory period etc. - there are so many names for this!)

I've created a brand new website especially for this time of the day, called character365.com.

Character365 is very simple to use and completely free! Every Monday a new discussion prompt or activity automatically appears. Every prompt revolves around making students think about their character and work on their personal development to ensure they are always striving to be their best. Because the prompt is up for a whole week, you can choose a specific day to do these activities or come back and review the same topic a few times during the week to check on progress and keep the focus at the forefront of your students' mind. Make sure you check it at least once a week as you won't be able to go back to old prompts or forward to new ones!

2. Another option for your mornings if you'd rather have something new each day, are these character themed morning meeting digital PowerPoints and printable journals. There are 10 different characteristics, one for each month of the year: resilience, respect, courage, compassion, tolerance, empathy, self-respect, leadership, honesty and self-esteem:

You can use either the PowerPoints on their own for class / peer discussions or the Printable Journals on their own for written activities for your students, or of course you could combine the two for maximum impact! They're such an easy and effective way of having the right conversations about these topics and having a different theme each month will really help your students hone in and focus on building that one characteristic at a time.
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Morning meetings (a.k.a. tutor time / form time / advisory period - it has many names!) is an extremely powerful way to start the school day with your students.  It sets your students off on the right foot. It gives them a routine that is safe and predictable, whilst still being something exciting to look forward to when done right. Establishing a powerful morning meeting is easy to do and doesn't need hours of prep, if you know where to look! Keep reading to learn some great tips for an effective morning meeting for your middle and high school students.

Whether you officially have time set aside for a dedicated morning meeting or not, it is a powerful addition to your school day that can take anywhere from 5-20 minutes. Even if you can't start the day this way, you can still use this strategy to start your lesson that will provide the same benefits!


What are morning meetings anyway?
Well here's the beauty of it - they can be whatever you want them to be! They're often used to develop classroom community and character, but there is no one way to achieve this of course, and things can vary depending on your students' needs at the time. It's just a slot of time at the start of the day (or lesson if you prefer) where you focus on the 'whole child'. I'll give you some suggestions and resources further down this article.


Are morning meetings for you?
That depends... Do you want your students to settle quickly at the start of the day?
Do you want to focus on character development and help your students be the best they can be without compromising heavily on the subject content you need to teach?
Do you want your students to look forward to the start of the school day with you?
If you said yes to any of these things then yes, morning meetings might well be for you!


What are some ideas for a great morning meeting?
For many years I had quite the challenge of coming up with new content for my form group every day - and I had them for 7 years so that was quite a lot of content that had to be brand spanking new each day! During this time I figured out the most effective way of preparing for the mornings and that was to have themed days. This meant that every day was predictable so they felt safe with what to expect, but the content was always new and fresh which kept the anticipation and excitement high! Win, win!
​Here's a great example:

In this pack, there are 200 slides - that's more than enough for one for every day of the school year!
Each day has a theme:

• "Motivational Mondays" to start the week with a positive quote / thought / discussion.
• "True or False Tuesdays" to start the day with a bit of fun and engaging trivia! You can have students put their hands up for true or false and then have a short discussion (or giggle) about some of the random facts they'll learn throughout the year.
• "Wellness Wednesdays" to focus on wellbeing, both mental and physical, that will help both themselves and demonstrate acts of kindness to others.
• "Thoughtful Thursdays" to develop their thinking skill with some deep, philosophical thoughts and discussions. This can be done as a whole class or discussed in pairs or groups if preferred.
• "Funny Fridays" to end the week on a high with a funny joke!

This is ideal if all you have is a few minutes at the start of the day, but still want to get a sound routine in place and want to have something for your students to look forward to. If you're interested in trying this resource for free, you can get week 1 right here with the benefit of also joining the mailing list where you will get access to the VIP area which is full of exclusive freebies not found on TpT! 

Of course you can fill your mornings with anything that takes your fancy, but there's something to be said for knowing you have a kit to pull from that you know will last you all year long - especially great for those emergencies and when your enthusiasm might perhaps be waning and you need something tried and true that you know will work!

What are some ways you like to spend morning meeting in your middle / high school classroom or is this the first time you're considering incorporating it into your routine? Leave a comment below!

Character Education is fundamentally important to teach our students so that they grow into respectful, honest and kind young people who make good decisions thus enabling them to reach their expanding potential in life, both academically and personally. If you want to learn more about the power of Character Education, check out the training area here.

While we know it's powerful and that we should teach it, the problem is that there is barely enough time in a day to cover all the curriculum we need to teach, right? How are we supposed to make time for teaching Character and building up classroom community as well? 

Having grappled with this same dilemma myself, I have come up with a few tips for integrating Character into my curriculum, that can often be done in 5 minutes! Keep reading to learn more.

Tip 1: look for opportunities
When it comes to Character Education, it's not always necessary to teach is as an "add on" (although this is an effective way to go deep on a topic). Sometimes you can find opportunities to teach character in every day activities. For example, if you notice your students always give up when they find tasks hard, you can take that opportunity to drop a positive quote such as "you only fail when you give up" followed by a little pep talk! Just repeating these mantras and offering encouragement throughout the day can still have an impact on your students and can be done in a few minutes.

Tip 2: secret angels
One of my favourite things to do with students is to encourage them to be someone's "secret angel" for a week. This teaches them the power of acts of kindness, how amazing it feels to be a good person and how they can easily help make the world a better place, all while fostering a positive classroom community.

How it works is simple. Put every student's name on a piece of paper and call them up to pull a name out of a hat at random. They are now a secret angel for that person, and they person they selected must be kept a secret so as not to spoil the excitement.

All students have to do is make an effort to demonstrate acts of kindness for that person without making it too obvious. It could be smiling at them, holding a door open, lending them a pen, leaving notes in their locker etc. they can get as creative as they like with it!

At the end of the week students are to share who they think their secret angel is followed by a conversation about how it made both parties feel as the angel and the recipient! Every time I have done this, it has been on students' mind all week - it's all they talk about, always guessing who is their angel and of course, enjoying being treated so well by a classmate! It is especially powerful if these people don't often talk to each other, as new friendships can even blossom!

Give "secret angels" a go, watch your students be active and kind citizens and see how much joy it will bring to your classroom community each week!

 This set of bundled resources includes a Digital Whiteboard option for you to display the quotes and prompts up on your wall where you can facilitate a classroom discussion. The other bundle is a set of printable journals with the same quotes and prompts to encourage your students to develop their writing skills while reflecting on character development. Or you can get the whole lot right here!

The character traits included in these bundles include: resilience, courage, compassion, self-confidence, respect, tolerance, honesty, self-respect, leadership and empathy. There are 200 quotes and 600 prompts, that's enough for every single school day of the year! 

If you would like to get a free sample of digital whiteboard and printable journal morning meetings, you can download them here: