This post is lesson helps and printable for "Come Follow Me" September's:
Why is it important to be honest? This lesson is a combination of several bullets suggested in the lesson outline.
As my attention-getter we played this game:
I let them look at the items in the pan for 1 minute. Then, I covered it up and they had to list as many things they could remember in one minute. HOWEVER, I took a pic of the tray ahead of time with my phone and let one of the YW cheat using the pic. The other girls didn't know this until AFTER they had to try and list the items. After finding out who won by writing the most items, I told them we had a cheater. We talked about why cheating is not fair.
We then filled out this Cause and Effect chart.
They use the Strength of Youth book to write down the 3 things listed that is not honest. Then, we looked up some of the scriptures in the outline that tell the outcome of a dishonest person. I wanted to stress to them that you should be honest not just because you will be "thrust down to hell" but because it's the RIGHT THING TO DO! We talked about how you can't have the companionship of the Holy Ghost if you are dishonest with people. Yes, we talked about repentance too. :)
LYING:
I used this object lesson when talking about lying with friends. I explained how you build up a relationship with a friend. And if you start lying to them then your relationship with crumble. I had a YW pull a cup out from the "foundation" of the friendship. We talked about how it's a lot harder to build a relationship back up after you have been dishonest with them.
CHEATING:
Being a past teacher, unfortunately when I taught Middle School I experienced a LOT of cheating. :( I told the girls how I would just get so frustrated cuz I couldn't trust them that they would keep their eyes on their own paper. I had to make a TEST A and TEST B. Have a different Pop Quiz with each class because kids would take pictures of the quiz and send it to friends in other classes. I told the YW that I would just get so frustrated I wanted to do this to them {showed the above pictures... they thought it was funny}.
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THESE PICS HERE. They responded that you should! I said I shouldn't have to! That's the problem! Everyone should have the moral compass inside them to know that it's not ok to cheat.
PERSONAL STORY: I told them the story about how I had a male student who was very popular. The girls all thought he was super cute. He was an athlete. One day he asked me to complete a teacher recommendation form for student council. He had 2 older siblings that had once been on student council so he thought for sure he would be selected. I couldn't check the box that said yes. It was because he was one of my students that would try to cheat during tests. I couldn't recommend him as an example to students when I knew he was dishonest.
PERSONAL STORY: Another time when I was teaching I wanted to express the importance of honesty with my students. So, I took the tests home. Graded them. Put the student's grades in my gradebook, but did NOT write their score on the tests. The next day I told the students that they were going to grade their own test and give me their grades. I was saddened to see how many students were dishonest and gave me a higher grade than I knew they earned. After taking in the grades they said they earned, I told them what I had done. I told them that I had already graded the tests and that the real test was to see who would be honest and give me their actual score. I told them that I knew who the honest ones were and the dishonest students were. I explained that they needed to always be honest because you never know when your honesty would be tested again.
I also shared these stories from the conference talks:
Throughout these we discussed the importance of being honest and what choices we should make to ensure we are women of Integrity.
