(NEW! I really appreciate...
I was walking home from school the other day when I notice 15-20 kids playing on a playground. No adult supervision. It occurred to me, "How wonderful it is to live in a place where they can do that. Safely. Even greeting stranger." It was one of those unplanned moments of savoring. I posted about in on Facebook and within a few hours, dozens of people had posted about something they appreciate and, in the process, probably "mentally re-experienced" the positive emotion.
I like to do savoring activities with my students but I usually do it with longer fluency exercises such as Hardwiring Happiness or some of the other activities on the Savoring page of this website.
Walking to school the next day, I was thinking about the kids on the playground and all the positive Facebook appreciation comments. This activity, I really appreciate" occurred to me. (Click HERE for tasksheet). It is the same concept as some of the others, but aimed at lower level students who don't yet have enough language for some of the longer activities. It starts are more of a "sentence level" so lower students can succeed. Higher-level students can use the same task. Just encourage them to go longer than the "5 sentences" in the instruction.
You may wonder why I left "family" off the idea list. For so many of my students, that is the default topic. So it will come up. But I gave other ideas to encourage a wider variety of topics.
Enjoy! And what do you appreciate?
I was walking home from school the other day when I notice 15-20 kids playing on a playground. No adult supervision. It occurred to me, "How wonderful it is to live in a place where they can do that. Safely. Even greeting stranger." It was one of those unplanned moments of savoring. I posted about in on Facebook and within a few hours, dozens of people had posted about something they appreciate and, in the process, probably "mentally re-experienced" the positive emotion.
I like to do savoring activities with my students but I usually do it with longer fluency exercises such as Hardwiring Happiness or some of the other activities on the Savoring page of this website.
Walking to school the next day, I was thinking about the kids on the playground and all the positive Facebook appreciation comments. This activity, I really appreciate" occurred to me. (Click HERE for tasksheet). It is the same concept as some of the others, but aimed at lower level students who don't yet have enough language for some of the longer activities. It starts are more of a "sentence level" so lower students can succeed. Higher-level students can use the same task. Just encourage them to go longer than the "5 sentences" in the instruction.
You may wonder why I left "family" off the idea list. For so many of my students, that is the default topic. So it will come up. But I gave other ideas to encourage a wider variety of topics.
Enjoy! And what do you appreciate?