K–5 Lesson
Teacher’s Guide
Doing Good: Jewish Values
Values you can see in action · Grades 3–5
K–5 Lesson
The easiest doorway into an unfamiliar community is a value a child already recognizes. Feeding someone hungry, welcoming a guest, caring for someone sick, helping repair the world: these appear in nearly every culture and faith a classroom studies. They appear in Jewish tradition too, with their own names, carried for thousands of years. For the students, the question is simple: what does this tradition teach about being a good person, and how is that like what other traditions teach?
This version of the lesson is built around one surprise. Most children, and most adults, file giving under “nice.” Jewish tradition files it under “fair.” The coin at the start sets up that reversal.
The idea a child should leave with: Helping people isn’t extra. It’s fair.
Students learn that Jewish tradition names and teaches specific values about how to treat other people and the world, and that these values are expressed through actions, not just words. By the end, a student can name two Jewish values, act one out without speaking, give an everyday example of each, and notice that other traditions teach similar values.
Three words are taught in class. Three more sit on the vocabulary card for students who want them: mitzvah, tikkun olam, and hachnasat orchim.
Hold up a coin. Do not explain yet.
Count the thumbs out loud and write the two numbers on the board. In most classes “nice” wins by a lot. Do not correct anyone. Just say, “Hold that thought.”
Let the reversal land. Ask the “nice” voters whether they want to switch. Some will, and some won’t. Both are fine. Then add only two more words, each with an action students can picture: chesed, kindness that asks for no reward, and bal tashchit, do not waste. Say each word, have the class say it back once, and give the pronunciation note: “kh” like the end of “Bach,” and plain “h” is fine. Emphasize that each one names an action.
Cut the freeze-frame cards apart ahead of time. Groups of 4 or 5 each draw one card: a value and a place or moment (the cafeteria, the bus, the playground, the park, the classroom, a new kid’s first day).
Give the four minutes, then run the showings fast: each group freezes for 20 seconds, the class gets three guesses, the group reveals the card. Ask one follow-up per group: “Who in the picture needed help? Who noticed?” If two groups land on the same value, that is the lesson working: one word, many actions. Say so out loud.
K–2 variant: skip the cards. The teacher names a value and a place, and pairs freeze on a count of three while the rest of the class guesses. Three rounds is plenty.
Before class, draw a bare tree on the board, trunk and branches only. Hand out the leaf sheet (four leaves per page). Cut the leaves apart ahead of time for younger groups, or let Grades 3–5 cut their own.
K–2 draw the act instead of writing it. As students finish, they tape their leaf onto the tree. Read a few aloud as the branches fill. The tree stays up all week.
Point to the tree, now full of leaves, and bring back the third word.
K–2 variant: skip the war story, or say only: “A rule in the Torah says: don’t cut down trees that give fruit.” Then go straight to the coin.
Take three answers. Children usually reach it themselves: the trees will feed people after the fighting ends, and the war is not the trees’ fault.
Now hold up the coin again.
Count the thumbs and write the new numbers next to the old ones. Then read the line below together once.
Ask: “Do other traditions we’ve studied teach these same values?” Draw the comparison. Most do. One way to compare any tradition, the way this lesson just did: what it asks people to believe, how it asks them to behave, and how people belong to it. Close on this: caring for others is a value the whole human family shares, taught in many languages.
