Thanksgiving is a great time of year to focus on class routines around thankfulness, but that doesn’t mean it is the only time to practice showing appreciation! Incorporating academic activities that focus on thankfulness throughout the year can help students develop a sense of gratitude and encourage positive attitudes and appreciation. Plus, they can be a fun change of pace! Here are a few of my favorite low-prep and quick academic activities around gratitude and thankfulness!
Thank You Cards
I am an avid thrift shopper. When I find thank you cards on sale, I snag them! I keep these cards in a bin in my classroom and encourage my students to write thank you cards to adults in our building when they have downtime or when we have time as a class. For example, if one of my team teachers is absent, I use that as an opportunity to suggest students write them a card, but I always give them free rein for who they’d like to pick.
My students love picking out a cute card for the grown-up they are thinking of and they use sentence starters to help them with the writing process (Feel free to save the sentence starters to the right to use with your own students!). My middle school students always enjoy this type of writing and other teachers are touched to receive these cards, too! Sometimes, my students are too shy to deliver the cards themselves, so I give them the choice of giving them to me, and I will put it in the teacher’s mailbox!
Gratitude Journal
A gratitude journal is a quick writing routine that can be done each day or week! Students simply record something that they are thankful for. This can be done in student notebooks, on a printable recording page, or even on a sticky note! Students can share with others through a turn-and-talk activity, with a whole class circle, or by raising their hands to share! After a few weeks of consistently recording, it’s so fun for students to look back and remember some of the little things that made them feel thankful!
Good Things
Each morning, I start my class by sharing Good Things! I challenge my students to try to share at least once a week and remind them to start looking for good things in their lives if they haven’t shared by Wednesday or so! Some students love it so much that they share something every day! It’s also a great way for students to get to know me and build trust within our classroom when I share Good Things from my life, too!
How do you promote gratitude in your classroom? Let me know in the comments!
