This PowerPoint has four activities revolving around the Seven Deadly sins that you can do with your class.

Right now, I'm in Summer Camp and teaching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I'm using this topic of the Seven Deadly sins to highlight the fact that each child represents at least one of the seven deadly sins.  Perhaps you'll find another way to incorporate the seven deadly sins into your lesson planning!

Activity One: Rank the sins, from the worst to the least worst.
Activity Two: Write a dialogue about the sins without using the actual word.
Activity Three: Mime one of the sins and have the students guess which sin you are miming.
Activity Four: Look through magazines and find different representations of the seven deadly sins. Then, talk about why you made the decisions that you did.

I was going to add pictures to the PowerPoint, but decided against it because I didn't want any of the students to mistakenly look at the pictures and say to themselves, "oh my god, that's me." I figured that using only words would be the least harmful way to introduce this topic.

I hope you find this helpful!


Sincerely,


T

Without making too big of a point out of it, I would just like to mention that while there are many interesting and valuable teaching points that you can make out of this kind of lesson, it does touch on religion. Depending on your particular school/students/coworker etc, that may become an issue.
 Tread carefully.

That said, I think that if you use nice, comic pictures, there's gonna be very little chance of a student feeling uncomfortable with the subject. Pictures always keep my kids interested and entertained. Treat everything with hyperbole and humour, and you generally don't have to worry too much about hurting people's feelings. (Not that I normally spend a whole lot of time worrying about people's feelings...)

Finally, I think that it's a good rule of thumb to discard anything that leaves you wondering if it might be offensive, confusing, or harmful. There are a trillion and one teachable topics out there, and a gazillion and one approaches to each of those topics. No need to pick one too close to the line.

Edit: While on the topic of the deadly sins, I would recommend "Seven" as a relevant video to follow up with. 

So far so good. I'm teaching high school students in second grade (probably at a low-intermediate level). They're not the most mature group of students to come together, but I find something as racy as sins to be something that keeps them awake... mildly. My attendance rate for summer camp has been atrocious. Most days, I'll be lucky if I can get even two students to show up.

By the way, if you're intrigued by this lesson, you should consider buying the book More Recipes for Tired Teachers where this PPT draws most of its inspiration from: http://www.amazon.com/More-Recipes-Tired-Teachers-Well-Seasoned/dp/0201523183/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1406539866&sr=8-1&keywords=more+recipes+for+tired+teachers.

This is all very interesting feedback (the most I've ever received on this message board, in fact).

Many thanks!


-T