Positive Psychology Learning Outcomes: Students will recognize, describe and experience beauty in the world and in nature; identify and describe the beauty within others around them and in themselves; and practice mindfulness meditation.
Language Learning Outcomes: Students will describe various scenes in nature using sense verbs and nature vocabulary; use adjectives to talk about character strengths; and learn new vocabulary related to nature, skills, and traits.
Lesson Information
Positive Psychology Learning Outcomes
Students will...
recognize, describe and experience beauty in the world and in nature.
identify and describe the beauty within others around them and in themselves.
practice mindfulness meditation.
Language Learning Outcomes
Students will...
describe various scenes in nature using sense verbs and nature vocabulary.
use adjectives to talk about character strengths.
learn new vocabulary related to nature, skills, and traits.
Explain to students that today they will be learning about something very different from their normal class time. This class will focus on appreciating--being thankful for--beauty and excellence.
Activate Background Knowledge
To warm up, ask students the following questions:
What is a beautiful place they have visited in the past or in their own countries?
What is something beautiful they have seen in Utah?
Activity 1: Vocabulary and Speaking
Explain to students they will talk about exploring nature using their senses. They will want to focus on seeing, hearing, smelling, and touching for this activity.
Distribute Handout 1 for this activity. Instruct students to fill out the Handout as you watch each video.
Open up the video links one by one, each with a different nature scene. Complete as many nature scenes as time allows (Slide 9).
Ask students to pay attention to the natural sounds and visual scenes/movements in the video. Students can use their imagination for the other senses:
What would this scene smell like? What would it feel like if they were there? What kind of activities would you do in each video? (swim, hike, etc.)
Encourage an ongoing discussion for each nature scene using the questions above.
At the end, discuss which nature scenes they connected to the most and why.
Instruct students to review the words in the handout for skills and traits. Give them a couple of minutes to look up unfamiliar words.
Allow students time to discuss with each other the skills and traits from the list that describe someone they know well.
Are there any words that they would use to describe this person that are not on the handout?
Students can follow the same instructions, finding their own personal strengths among the skills and traits from the list. Let them know that they can write words on the handout if they think of more that are not listed there.
Activity 4: Speaking
Discuss the many places where beauty can be found (Slide 15).
The following are some examples:
a beautiful building
a song
a sculpture
writing/poetry
A painting
Food / cooking or baking
A type of dance
Inspiring people
Beautiful experiences (walking in the rain, laughter of a child, hugging someone you haven’t seen in a while)
Instruct students to use their phones to find an example of something that they find beautiful--could be picture, poetry or book, painting, sculpture, etc.--and have them share in small groups of three or four.
Homework
Challenge students to find a new example of beauty in the natural world around them. Tell them to prepare to share what they find in the following class period.
Follow-Up
Tuesday:
Have students share an example of beauty that they found since last class.
