Thanksgiving, gratitude and appreciation: activities with a high-school ESL class

October 26, 2011

Sarah Eaton and Farida Garrett at James Fowler High School: Collaborators on a Lesson in Gratitude

Recently I was invited to speak at James Fowler High School in Calgary to a group of English as a Second Language (ESL) students from the Philippines, Afghanistan, Palestine, Kenya and other countries. The theme was gratitude and appreciation.

My invitation was to visit the class two times. The first time was two weeks ago, during which we incorporated the theme of Canadian Thanksgiving, which had just passed. Today was my second visit to the school. I got to work with the students on their gratitude journals, which they started earlier in the project.

Here’s how we structured the session:

Objectives

  • Learn about Thanksgiving as a celebration
  • Learn new vocabulary around giving thanks
  • Increase students’ awareness of what it means to give thanks and be grateful
  • Develop an understanding of gratitude as a personal, social and cultural practice.

Artifacts, realia and props

  • A pumpkin
  • A banana bread made by the students’ teacher, Mrs. Farida Garrett (It was her idea to share the cake to symbolize “breaking bread” together)
  • Letter blocks that spelled out “Give Thanks”

Supplies

  • markers
  • coloured pencils
  • glue sticks
  • glue gun
  • stickers
  • flip chart paper

Session #1: Activities

Saying thanks – Students shared how they say “thank you” in their native languages. Then, they wrote out the word(s) on a flip chart paper.

Vocabulary building – The words “thanksgiving”, “gratitude”, “gratefulness” and “appreciate” were written out on flip chart paper. Mrs. Garrett drilled students on how to pronounce the words. We worked with students to help them use the words in sentences.

Brief on Thanksgiving – We talked about the celebration of Canadian Thanksgiving, how it originated and what it means.

Making a thank you card – Students made their own thank you cards and thought about who they’d like to give their card to.

In between my first visit and second visit to the school, the students started a gratitude journal.

Session #2 Activities

Review the new vocabulary.

Review what the celebration of Thanksgiving is about.

Students developed their gratitude journals, contributing writing and drawings about what they were grateful for. We asked them to express their appreciation for their family, teacher, school, community and country. Students generated their own ideas about what they appreciated.

What an amazing group of resilient, bright young students Mrs. Fowler has. At the beginning of the first session, students were hesitant to talk and seemed baffled when they were asked to think about people in their lives that they appreciated and why they were grateful to them. By the end of our second session, the students were talking openly about who makes a difference in their lives and why they are grateful to them. In two weeks, they grew leaps and bounds in their personal development, as they learned that recognizing others  and appreciating them is a significant part of cultivating meaningful relationships.

Who deserves your thanks today?

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

6 Comments | education, ESL, Multiculturalism, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

Free social media workshop for language educators and literacy practitioners

July 21, 2011

Calling all language teachers, literacy practitioners, trainers and facilitators!

August 8 to 12

Online conference for language teachers and literacy practitioners.

Presenters will share their knowledge of tools such as:

  • Wikis
  • Blogs
  • Voki
  • VoiceThread
  • Posterous
  • Skype
  • Digital Storytelling.

I’m giving a session on how to use online portfolios for evaluation and assessment.

This conference is entirely online, so you can tune in from anywhere, providing you have a high speed internet connection and speakers. The best part is that it is completely and 100% FREE. This event is entirely sponsored by the Language Resource Acquisition Centre at San Diego State University. It’s language educators and trainers sharing what they know, how they learned the tools and how you can, too.

Register here: http://larc.sdsu.edu/social-media-workshop/

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

Comments Off on Free social media workshop for language educators and literacy practitioners | education, language program administration, languages, Literacy, social media | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

12 Great Resources on Strength-Based Leadership

July 10, 2011

Last Thursday I did a leadership workshop with the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology Students Association (SAITA) in Calgary. We did an entire afternoon around strength-based leadership. I led the group through a personal and large-group strengths inventory. Then, we did another activity to see how people can leverage the strengths of the associations and groups they belong to. We wrapped up by helping the newly elected student leaders revisit their goals to see how they could achieve them more effectively using an asset-based approach.

A few of the participants asked for the titles of some reading materials on this topic. This post is dedicated to the wonderful leaders at SAITSA. Here are a dozen of my favorite books on asset-based or strength-based leadership. The authors may call it by different terms, but the underlying ideas are shared among these works:

Appreciative Inquiry Commons. (n.d.).   Retrieved May 1, 2008, from http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/

Cooperrider, D. L., Whitney, D., & Stavros, J. M. (2003). Appreciative inquiry handbook. Bedford Heights, OH: Lakeshore Publishers.

Cooperrider, D. L. (2007). Business as an agent of world benefit: Awe is what moves us forward.   Retrieved February 21, 2008, from http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/practice/executiveDetail.cfm?coid=10419

Cooperrider, D. L., & Whitney, D. (2008). A positive revolution in change: Appreciative inquiry.   Retrieved March 27, 2008, 2008, from http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu/uploads/whatisai.pdf

Cramer, K. D., & Wasiak, H. (2006). Change the way you see everything through asset-based thinking. Philadelphia: Running Press.

Eliot, C. (1999). Locating the Energy for Change: An Introduction to Appreciative Inquiry. Winnipeg: International Institute for Sustainable Development / Insitut International du Developpment Durable.

Faure, M. (2006). Problem solving was never this easy: Transformational change through appreciative inquiry. Performance Improvement, 45(9), 22-31.

Kretzmann, J. P., & McKnight, J. L. (1993). Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community’s Assets. Skokie, IL: ACTA Publications.

Kretzmann, J. P., McKnight, J. L., Dobrowolski, S., & Puntenney, D. (2005). Discovering Community Power: A Guide to Mobilizing Local Assets and Your Organization’s Capacity. Asset-Based Community Development Institute, School of Education and Social Policy,
Northwestern University. http://www.abcdinstitute.org/docs/kelloggabcd.pdf

Murrell, K., L. (1999). International and intellectual roots of appreciative inquiry. Organization Development Journal, 17(3), 49-61.

Northwestern University. (n.d.). The Asset-Based Community Development Institute: School of Education and Social Policy.   Retrieved October 1, 2010, from http://www.abcdinstitute.org

Tzu, Sun. The Art of War (L. Giles, Trans.). London: Arcturus Publishing Ltd. (The original was believed to have been written between 505 B.C. and 473 B.C., though exact date unknown).

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

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Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

Calgary ladies – Join me for lunch today at the Coast Plaza Hotel

June 14, 2011

Last month a colleague invited me to join her as a guest at the monthly ladies luncheon of the Calgary group of the Progressive Group of Independent Business Women. I accepted and enjoyed the experience thoroughly. As someone who makes her living doing contract work in education and non-profit, I don’t always consider myself a business woman… more of a freelance educational contractor. This year, I’ve been asked (asked!) to share what I know about educational technologies with small business people. After the lunch last month, the organizer, Julie Chandler, asked me if I’d be their speaker this month and tell them about webinars. I was honoured and of course, I accepted.

I’ve been doing webinars since 2005, but have really started to incorporate them into my work in early 2010. Since then, it seems I’m giving webinars and e-learning classes on all kinds of topics, for all kinds of educational and literacy organizations. I love it, because it gives me a chance to combine two of my passions – technology and education.

I have a soft spot for helping women of all kinds learn and grow. I have found that many people are keen to learn the nuts and bolts about webinars and how they can use them to advance their organization, whether it’s a non-profit or a small business. (In my experience, many small businesses operate like non-profits because their owners are so passionate about what they’re doing that money comes second.)

So if you’re among those people who wants to learn more about webinars in simple, easy-to-understand terms, join us today at the Coast Plaza Hotel for lunch. It’ll be fun!

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

1 Comment | Eaton International Consulting Inc., technology, webinar | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

Free webinar – New Trends in Education: Formal, Non-formal and Informal Learning – Implications for Evaluation and Assessment

May 27, 2011

** This event has passed. Check out the recording of this program here: http://youtu.be/6iH_ikNmn9I **

The Ontario Literacy Coalition has a series of professional development webinars for literacy professionals. I met these folks last year when I spoke at their Spotlight on Learning Conference. I was delighted when they invited me back this year to present via webinar. I gave them a few different programs to choose from and they put the topics out for a vote to their stakeholders. The topic that got the most votes was “New Trends in Education: Formal, Non-formal and Informal Learning – Implications for Evaluation and Assessment”.

This is a free event for educators and literacy professionals. But there’s one catch. They have a limited number of seats, so if you’re interested, you’ll need to reserve your spot. Their May webinar was filled to capacity. Join us:

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

1:00 – 2:00 p.m. EDT (There is a link to show that in your time zone here).

Feel free to share this post with other literacy advocates. This is an open event. Would love to have you come and be part of the conversation!

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Update – January 2018 – This blog has had over 1.8 million views thanks to readers like you. If you enjoyed this post, please “like” it or share it on social media. Thanks!

Sarah Elaine Eaton is a faculty member in the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Canada.

Comments Off on Free webinar – New Trends in Education: Formal, Non-formal and Informal Learning – Implications for Evaluation and Assessment | education, Literacy | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Sarah Elaine Eaton, Ph.D.

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