Ethics and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Ethics is one of my favorite things to teach my Kinder students. When they enter in the beginning of the year many of them base their opinions on what they think you want to hear. If you ask them is something is right or wrong, they change their thoughts based on your questioning. For example, "is it wrong to steal?". And they will answer yes. But what if you are a mother stealing to feed your baby who is starving (kind of the Jean Valjean argument). They answer, then it's right. They are listening to your tone and your questions and trying to give you the answer you want to hear.

The more we work on ethics and discuss the issues that arise in the stories we read, the more confident they get in defending their own arguments. We start pretty simply-our first activity this year is based on the Chicka Chicka Boom Boom story. Was it right or wrong that the letters went up the coconut tree in the first place? I only had one student yesterday who took the opposite tack from the obvious "wrong" answer. But the more we do these activities this year, the more they will learn to see from both sides.