Character Strengths

This lesson helps pupils to identify the character strengths/virtues which their results from the VIA Character Strengths survey suggests that they use most often (http://www.viacharacter.org/www/). It then helps them to develop their understanding of how they can draw upon these strengths when they need to. This builds upon work done on virtues in Year 9.

  • Ask students to get into groups of about 4 and provide them with the diagram of the 24 character strengths in the VIA survey. Ask students to guess each other’s top strengths and give reasons why they think their class mates demonstrate these strengths.
  • Play this clip from The Choir
  • Ask the students to think about what character strengths were used and by whom to overcome adversity and stay engaged in the process of developing as a choir. Discuss in small groups and then as a class.
  • Ask students to think of a time when they have used one or more of those character strengths to get something done, or to get themselves unstuck. Ask them to tell those stories to each other and for the listener to identify the strengths used in the story. Feedback examples of the stories the students tell.

Next steps

  • Ask students to think of a difficulty that they are having at the moment, where they are struggling to stay focused with something that they need to get done.
  • Pool the challenges into the group and ask the group to take each challenge in turn and use the ideas from the previous lessons to come up with 3 things that could be done to address each challenge.

Prep. Ask students to try out the 3 point plan suggested and see if it works. Students should write about their experiences.