I introduce "The Science of Happiness" through the "Happiness Dictation" on the "Introducing happiness" page of this website.
A few weeks in, we revisit those ideas with a "happiness haiku". Creating these poems on the topics requires deeper thinking than the earlier dictation task did.
There are a few ways to do Happiness Haiku. They are identified on the tasksheet. The way I usually do it it to have students work in pairs or small groups. I assign each group one of the eight "happiness ideas". They write a haiku on their topic. On large paper (A3), they make a poster with their haiku. We then share all the haiku with the class.
A few weeks in, we revisit those ideas with a "happiness haiku". Creating these poems on the topics requires deeper thinking than the earlier dictation task did.
There are a few ways to do Happiness Haiku. They are identified on the tasksheet. The way I usually do it it to have students work in pairs or small groups. I assign each group one of the eight "happiness ideas". They write a haiku on their topic. On large paper (A3), they make a poster with their haiku. We then share all the haiku with the class.
Those without student photos are some of Kimura Harumi"s students' haiku. Harumi teaches a class where she uses a lot of positive psychology activities. I am blessed to have positive, energetic colleagues like her. (The one about digestion is from a Food and Nutrition major, so, yes, that's what she meant).
Below are examples from some of my students. This set is from a class on Elementary Education and Early Childhood Ed majors, a required class. A couple months ago, almost no one in that class liked English. They are much more positive now. (they've learned that English isn't just a test. It is a way to communicate. As they were working, you could sense the joy of creating something in English. They hand't done that before.
These are examples from last year and the year before. There are some problems with syllable counts (that is really hard for Japanese students since the Japanese pronunciation system is so different from English -- but, hey!, that's why we are working on it.), a few grammar and spelling mistakes, etc. (We ran out of editing time) But the messages are clear. And for most of these students, it is the first time they have created something in English. And a few of these haiku actually strike me as more than true. They approach wisdom.