Lessons About Gratitude
Here are some thoughts and ideas for lessons where students share what they are thankful for in life, in school, in others.
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Thanksgiving is around the corner so it is timely to share a few thoughts about lessons dealing with “gratitude”. It’s a great SEL topic and one where your students won’t just learn some language but also develop their character. (See this post for our top recommended social-emotional learning videos).
Giving thanks and expressing gratitude is a fundamental human emotion and need. There are many ways and angles to take when building a lesson for this topic in class. Here are a few suggestions and supplemental resources to help you organize your lesson.
Sharing what you are thankful for. Students simply list 3 or 5 things that they are thankful for in their life. Here is an organizer that can be used. Make sure to also have students answer “why” they are thankful. Ex. I’m thankful my mother is healthy because for a long time, she wasn’t. You might also provide a list of things and students choose the ones they are most grateful for.
A class/school focus. A wonderful way for teachers to find out what students think about the school, the lessons and their learning is to ask them to share what they like about them. You could do this anonymously as a survey or just together as a class. Students can also write a letter of gratitude to a former teacher. Or at the end of a course or year, share thank you thoughts.
Thanking each other. Students need to acknowledge the things they are thankful for about their classmates - it really helps build class atmosphere. Get students writing out simple “Thank you for …” notes and then mingling and giving them to each other, using the language of thanking as they do. see these cards as an example.
Being positive. Gratitude is about taking on a positive attitude even when things seem negative. Teach students phrases to use to turn a bright light on a bad situation. State something not so good and have students respond, “Just be thankful that …”. See our Get Talking book for examples.
Language examples. Video offers up real language people use when giving thanks. Use this video to show people giving thanks for things in their lives.
Music. It’s A Wonderful World is a beautiful song for a lesson on gratitude. Why is it a wonderful world? Ask and share student thoughts together.
I hope this list has generated some ideas for you to use in your classes. And to end - of course, THANK YOU for reading this and being a member of ELT Buzz Teaching Resources!