A parent of one of my students recently sent me this video:
Shawn Achor encourages us to think differently about the correlation between success and happiness. Many people would say that if you become successful, you will be happy. Achor argues that if your focus is first on being happy, success will follow and your happiness will be longer lasting as it is built into the fabric of who you are, rather than pinned to reaching your latest goal, target or sales figures.
Students in the fourth grade class next to me, have recently watched this video and started a 21 day happiness journal via Hapyr. Each day the students choose to write three things they are grateful for and/or a happy memory they had in the last 24 hours.
I have recently become a big fan of TEDEd: Lessons Worth Sharing. This is a great resource for teachers who want to find a video (from TED talks or on YouTube) and then create a lesson for students by ‘flipping’ the video = providing guided content after watching the video that students can do at their own pace (at home or school). One of the great things about it, is that if you find something you like but the creator hasn’t asked quite the questions you were hoping to have your students dig into, you can ‘flip’ the lesson yourself and rework it to suit your own class.
Here is the TEDEd Lesson I created using Shawn Achor’s “The Happy Secret To Better Work”.
Here is a SKITCH screengrab explaining the features of TEDEd:
Have you used TEDEd or Skitch? What are your thoughts?
What is ONE thing you could do RIGHT NOW in order to be happier?
sonya terborg 