How to Use Puppets to Teach Good Manners

Use puppets to enhance your manners lesson.

By teaching your students proper manners, you can prepare them not only to be productive citizens, but also to be polite ones. While there are numerous ways to effectively educate students on proper manners, integrating humor and creating interactive lessons may lead to increased retention of the information. To build an exciting and relevant etiquette lesson for your students, integrate puppets into the mix and allow students to engage with these imaginary figures while exploring the concept of manners.

Instructions

1. Discuss the concept of manners with your students. Check their basic understanding what it means to be polite and how they can tell if someone has manners. Create a list of characteristics of a person with manners on the classroom chalkboard to ensure that all students understand what manners are.

2. Introduce your students to two puppets. Use any two puppets you wish. It is preferable to use two different puppets, instead of two versions of the same doll, so that students do not become confused as to which puppet is which during the course of the lesson.

3. Explain to the students that one puppet has good manners, and the other bad. Tell the students that, just like people, some puppets haven't learned how to behave appropriately. Explain to the students that they are going to work together to determine which puppet needs a little help developing his manners.

4. Allow your students to ask the puppets questions. Ask students to raise their hands and ask the puppets questions about their lives.

5. Have the puppets respond politely or impolitely as necessary. When the students pose questions to the impolite puppet, make its responses short and terse, with no polite pleases or thank yous. When students pose questions to the polite puppet, craft his responses in an approachable and courteous tone. Periodically, have the impolite puppet interrupt the polite one as he responds.

6. Ask your students to identify which puppet is polite. Students will likely be able to pick out the rude puppet nearly immediately. Ask the students to explain why they feel that that puppet is the rude one, requiring the students to give specific examples of what the puppet did that was rude.

7. Instruct your students to compose a list of things that the impolite puppet could do to be more polite. Ask students to raise their hands and volunteer ideas. Create an extensive list of student suggestions on the classroom chalkboard. If students fail to mention important things, like saying please and thank you, add them to the list yourself.

8. Allow the students to give the impolite puppet tips, making the puppet respond appropriately. After crafting an extensive list, allow the students to read the list to the puppet. Give one student at a time the opportunity to select a tip from the list to give to the puppet. Have the puppet respond to the students, taking note of their kind suggestions and vowing to improve upon his impolite ways.

References

• TeacherPlanet: Manners and Etiquette
• Speak up Texas: Manners Training Program