The Teaching of Wellness – PRIME Instructional Activities and Strategies #2

This post continues the series focusing on teaching and integrating wellness into the culture of our classes. These prime activities and strategies work for the teaching of all the character strengths. They are designed for elementary school but they can be adapted for MS and HS.

• Class Code – We regularly start the school year by working as a class to set the norms for conduct in how community members will treat each other. One approach to setting the “class code” is to list in one column all the expected behaviors while also using a second column to record the character strengths that will support the behaviors. An additional strategy is to talk with students about their “personal code” based on their values and character strengths. To go a bit deeper on this topic here is a blog post that investigates the use of applying technical terms in the very human world of how we make decisions.

• Know Your Character Strengths – Watch this video to introduce the idea of character strengths to your students. Here are two videos that introduce the 24 Via Character Strengths and what integration into the classroom culture can look like: 24 Character Strengths Explained | Positive Education with Character Strengths

• WELL Class – We often start the year by having students set personal goals around academics, health, interests, etc. One can engage WOOP to help with the goal-setting process. To go the next step on the topic of wellness the class can use PERMAH to list strategies and character strengths within each pillar that they will “exercise” throughout the year to be more well.

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Photo by Erol Ahmed on Unsplash