Positive Psychology Learning Outcomes:
Students will be able to recognize positive feelings through answering questions about gratitude and experience and express positive feelings through talking about gratitude.
Language Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to connect content to background knowledge, actively participate in conversations through proper responses, ask and answer a limited variety of questions, and use specific phrases/chunks to express positive feelings through talking about gratitude.
Lesson Information
Positive Psychology Learning Outcomes
Students will...
- recognize positive feelings through answering questions about gratitude.
- experience and express positive feelings through talking about gratitude.
Language Learning Outcomes
Students will...
- connect content to background knowledge.
- actively participate in conversations through proper responses.
- ask and answer a limited variety of questions.
- use specific phrases/chunks to express positive feelings through talking about gratitude.
Materials
Overview
Explain to students that you will talk about being grateful and about ways to express gratitude.
Activate Background Knowledge
Give the students a minute or so to discuss the following questions:
- What makes you happy? Why?
- What does gratitude mean? (Teacher models answer first)
- When do you experience gratitude? (Teacher models answer first)
Activity 1: Vocabulary/Speaking
Present lexical family: gratitude (n.)/thankfulness, grateful (adj.)/thankful, to be grateful (v.)/thankful, gratefully (adv.)/thankfully
- Definitions and examples:
- Gratitude/thankfulness = the feeling of being happy because of something
- Ex: I feel gratitude because of/for my family.
- (To be) Grateful/Thankful = happy because of something
- Ex: I am grateful/thankful for my family.
- Gratefully/Thankfully = in a grateful manner
- Ex: Thankfully, my family is healthy.
- Discuss: What are we grateful for? Make a list on the board together as a class:
- family, friends, jobs, home, food, clothes, etc.
- Discuss: What are you grateful for? Why?
- I am grateful for my mom because she is kind and loving.
- I am grateful for my mom because she cooks for me.
Activity 2: Speaking
Fill in the blanks while talking to a partner:
- What are you grateful for?
- I feel gratitude because of/for _____________.
- I am grateful for ____________________.
- I am grateful for _______________ because _______________.
Activity 3: Speaking
Walk around the classroom and ask three different students what they are grateful for. Write their name and answer on a piece of paper. Teacher asks students about what their partners are grateful for.
- Ex: Andres, what is Jenny grateful for?
- She is grateful for her family.
Activity 4: Speaking
Share with a partner three words you learned today.
Homework
Record yourself expressing gratitude for at least three things in your life.
Follow-up
Tuesday:
Write a thank-you note to the anonymous donor that gave each student $200. Teacher explains what a thank-you note looks like and gives some time to the students to write their notes. Please bring those to the office before Wednesday at 3pm. They will be bound in a book, so doing this on normal paper would work great.
Wednesday:
1-2 min: Express gratitude for something/someone in your life using the expression I feel gratitude because of/for.... Share with a partner.
Thursday:
1-2 min: Express gratitude for something/someone in your life using the expression I am grateful/thankful for... Share with a partner.
