Virtue Literacy guidance 

In our humility...

We know that teachers are already engaged in developing children's character every day.  Our Virtue Literacy Programme provides book titles, guidance notes on 'drawing out the virtue' and accompanying resources and activities which are intended to support busy teachers to deliver a coherent programme of character education.  With detailed guidance, we hope skilled teachers will take ownership of the materials and bring them to life for their pupils in the classroom. 

Storytelling

Our Programme uses wonderful stories to explore complex virtues. We recognise that the skill of the teacher is paramount in ensuring children really experience stories emotionally. Although our Programme is not a short course in storytelling, the section of each lesson plan entitled Drawing out the virtue is included to encourage effective story-telling. Through this we hope children will be helped to put themselves in the positions of the characters; to really feel what they are feeling; and to live through the stories so the dilemmas feel genuinely testing and the virtue lessons authentic.

Language

Our Programme is called 'Virtue Literacy' because it aims to develop children's understanding of the language of virtues.  While it might seem unnatural at first to use some of this vocabulary with such young children, we strongly encourage teachers to use the new virtue vocabulary as described in the lesson plans, alongside synonyms if necessary,for example when teaching a lesson on judgement in reception, you might say 'is he making a good choice? Is he showing good judgement?' This will help pupils can develop an understanding of the word and its meaning. 

Context

The Floreat Virtue Literacy Programme has been designed to be implemented within the context of the Floreat Character Programme as a whole.  These lessons are intended to be delivered in the context of schools which also adopt a 'caught' approach to character. See the Culture and Training section of our website.