Gratitude

Grat-i-tude (noun) : the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness

Why teach gratitude?

By reading the definition of gratitude it seems pretty obvious as to why I would want to teach it to middle school students, but did you know that showing and receiving gratitude can improve your mental and physical health?!?

If that doesn't make you make you excited about gratitude, maybe this information provided by Forbes will get you interested...

Gratitude...

Opens the door to more relationships and opportunities
Improves your physical health
Improves mental health
Enhances empathy and reduces aggression
Helps you sleep better
Improves self-esteem
Increases mental strength

Still not sold on how important gratitude is? Try letting someone know that you are thankful for them and everything they do and see how it affects you!

Gratitude Trees - I used this lesson with my fifth graders and they did a really great job with it. Their trees also got a few compliments about livening up the hallway from staff.

This lesson begins by asking students what they know about gratitude. What is it? Why is it important? After having enough of a discussion for students to understand what it is I ask them to build gratitude trees. Each tree has four parts and on each part they have to express gratitude towards someone or something. The parts are family, friends, school, and anything. After the majority of the students have completed their trees we have a discussion around how they would feel if their family and friends were to see this tree. Would it make them feel happy or sad? Why is it important that we show people gratitude and what happens when we don't?

ABC's of Gratitude - I'm planning to use this lesson with my fifth grade students. It seems like a simple way to introduce gratitude and have students start thinking about all of the things they are grateful for.

This lesson explores the basics of gratitude including the definition, the benefits, and how to practice it. There is a presentation to guide the lesson, which includes a video from Sesame Street that does a great job explaining gratitude. The final activity challenges students to come up with 26 things, one for each letter of the alphabet, that they are grateful for. For example, they might start with "A" and put they are grateful for airplanes that can take us to different parts of the world; for "B" they might put they are thankful for their brother and so on. I would challenge you to do the ABC's of Gratitude Challenge with your students and see how you do!

Letters of Gratitude - I got this idea from a SoulPancake video, which happens to be one of my favorite YouTube channels. In the video, each person expresses their gratitude to an important person through a phone call. Since it seems impractical to have each student call an important person I had them write a letter. The majority of the students loved it and I even had a few tell me some follow up stories.

In this lesson, students explore the word "gratitude." Students are asked to watch a video (Gratitude = Happiness) that explains gratitude and how expressing it can benefit us. Each student will then write a letter of gratitude to an important person in their life and have them option to give it to the person they wrote it to. (Just a heads up, there is a part in this video where a woman swears. It is bleeped out, but I always make sure to skip it when showing students. It happens between 5:20 to 5:30.

How it's Made - This idea came to me after I saw a number of middle school students just randomly breaking pencils. I thought about kids around the world who don't have the opportunity to get new school supplies each year and wondered whether or not the students breaking pencils knew how much work goes into making a pencil. It is interesting to see what students find out and I hope it helps them develop a deeper understanding of not taking the things we have for granted.

In this lesson, students are asked to do a little research. I ask students to select an everyday object such as paper, stapler, or pencil and conduct research to find out how it is made. They are given a poster-sized paper to map out how the item was made and how much work went into it. Once the students have done their research and have their posters done, they share with the class and we discuss how our keyword "gratitude" relates to the activity.

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