CHARACTER STRENGTH OF GRATITUDE – INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES

The following are instructional strategies and activities to help integrate the strength of GRATITUDE into the culture of your classroom.

• Awesome Things – Elaborate on the work of Neil Pashricha’s 1000 Awesome Things blog to connect to student curiosity, gratitude, zest and other character strengths. Possible class activities could be to have a Wall of Awesomeness! where students post awesome things from their lives, a class blog or podcast of awesomeness that students author and publish, a school-wide weekly newsletter sharing out what students and teachers in your grade level find exciting and incredible in their lives and/or just take time periodically to read Neil’s 1000 Top Things list to help your students to pause and appreciate!

• Compliments Project – Try this project. Also connects to kindness.

• Gratitude Wall(s) – Whiteboards in hallways and the possibility of having a wall in the atrium area. The wall could be designated for wellness use only so during the year we could use it to advocate, communicate and provide a public space for education and interaction around wellness.

• Gratitude Journal – Read this extensive article and this one to pull together your approach to having your students do gratitude journals. Also look to bring a “gratitude tree” into your classroom.

• Growing Gratitude from Six Seconds – Adapt this lesson to your needs.

• Inward-Outward – Think of ways to practice gratitude internally for your own wellbeing. Think of ways to express the gratitude outward to benefit others. Example: In- Pause to give yourself some kudos for just being yourself and taking care of yourself. Out- Share what you appreciate about a friend with him/her.

• Mindfulness Activities – Design activities that help your students identify their physical and emotional states while practicing being present. Here is a video to introduce mindfulness to your students. Help students be present and aware of how they feel when interacting with others. Here is a lesson page with a few ideas. Positive Psychology provides research and a long list of activities to try in your classroom. Smiling Mind provides PDF downloads of lesson ideas for the different age ranges of our elementary school. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the links to the PDFs.

  Build in a few times during the day for students to stop, to be mindful and to think about their emotions. You can announce the moments or possibly use a chime at set intervals or to sound off randomly. Here is a digital chime. Choose from the many meditations for children at Insight Timer to take a longer mindful moment with your students.

  ReachOut.com (focus on MS and HS students) provides a few apps that can help students manage their feelings of anxiety and worry. Take a look at their main app ReachOut Worry Time. They have more apps at the bottom of the page.

• Savoring – Introduce this concept to then get input from students as to what they find themselves naturally savoring. Develop activities that help students grow their awareness of being in the moment savoring their experiences. Here are a few activities for savoring and having gratitude: 1) Notice Nature – Guide students to dial up their senses during nature walks. 2) Enjoy Physical Sensations – Hyper focus on smells and touch giving students opportunities to describe their experiences. 3) Remembering Happy Times (Reminiscent savoring) – Guide your students to visualize and re-experience past good and rich memories. 4) Looking Ahead – Encourage your students to think about upcoming experiences that they are excited about whether in or out of school. This also can involve practicing their strength of proactivity in planning for the experience. ¹

¹ The Strength Switch: How the New Science of Strength-Based Parenting Helps Your Child and Your Teen Flourish, by Lea Waters, Scribe Publications, 2018, pp. 141–143.

Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash