Category Archives: Happiness

Take a Happiness Test

"The price of greatness is responsibility over each of your thoughts" – Winston Churchill

Here are a few sites that are designed to test your level of happiness:

The Happiness Test: How Happy Are You?

Authentic Happiness: Using The New Positive Psychology – Looks like you will have to register to access the quizzes.

BBC Happiness Test

Stress and Happiness Test

Oprah’s Satisfaction With Life Scale

Personal Alchemy’s Happiness Test

This is how I would use it in the classroom:

1. Print it out and test the students take the test. Then break them up into pairs and let them discuss each question, what they chose and why.

2. Cut and paste the quiz questions to Powerpoint slides. On each slide put the question and the choices. Then have the students number the questions on a sheet of paper where they will put their choices. After everyone has made their choices, put the scoring index on the screen and give them a few moments to score their results. After everyone is finished, you can flip back to the first question and ask them what they put down as their score. Additionally, you can assign someone to add up all the scores and divide it by the number of students in the class for an overall happiness score for the entire class.

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Happiness Activities

Acts of Kindness
http://personaldevelopment.suite101.com/article.cfm/acts_of_kindness_ideas

Happiness Activities
http://behappy4life.com/positiveselftalk.html

Happy Life U
http://www.happylifeu.com/creating-happiness.html

Happiness List
http://fun.familyeducation.com/activity/self-esteem/39512.html

Happiness Brainstorm
http://www.humanityquest.com/topic/art_activities/brainstorming/index.asp?theme1=happiness

Draw Happiness
http://www.humanityquest.com/topic/art_activities/DrawFeeling/index.asp?theme1=happiness

Create a Happiness Collage
http://www.humanityquest.com/topic/art_activities/DrawFeeling/index.asp?theme1=happiness

Create a Happiness Maze
http://www.humanityquest.com/topic/art_activities/exercise9/index.asp?theme1=happiness

Create a booklet on the care and feeding of happiness
http://www.humanityquest.com/topic/art_activities/exercise13/index.asp?theme1=happiness

Create a Happiness Mask
http://www.humanityquest.com/topic/art_activities/exercise15/index.asp?theme1=happiness

Create a Gratitude Journal
http://www.serenejourney.com/2009/03/gratitude-journal-30-days-to-happiness/

Rate Your Optimism
http://goodlifezen.com/2009/05/12/rate-your-3-dimensions-of-optimism/

Chain of Worries
http://www.acontentlife.com/2009/03/how-to-see-clearly-when-you%E2%80%99re-worried/

Happiness Podcast
http://www.projecthappiness.com/?cat=11

The How of Happiness
http://lifelearningtoday.com/2008/01/25/the-how-of-happiness/
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=4115033

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ELT & Happiness

Happy VS Unhappy Sentence Strip Activity

Cut and Paste it to a Word document, print it out and cut into sentence strips. Print a master copy and number it. Be sure to number each individual sentence strip too. That way you can call out the number and then the pairs can share without giving away the sentence. Break the students up into pairs. Pass out the sentence strips. Tell the students to create an unhappiness sentence based on the information provided in their happiness sentence.

For example, happiness is contagious…when you reflect happiness, then everyone around you catches the happy bug and are happy, too.

Acceptable response: Unhappiness is contagious…when you reflect on unhappiness, then all others around you will catch the unhappy bug and are unhappy too.

Give the students a few minutes to complete the activity and then let one student share the happiness sentence and one student share the unhappiness sentence aloud with the class. Depending on how many students you have in class, you can have them share it with the whole class, or break up into small groups to share. If you choose the small group method, you could set a timer and have them switch the positive sentence with another pair to see how many variations of the unhappiness sentence can be derived from one happiness sentence. (Make sure they copy down the sentence number too, so you will know which is which.)

Take the happiness quiz
http://pttest.msn.com/cgi-bin/transfer.cgi?partner=mns&test=happiness

Our musical friend Bibi Baxter weighs in on the secret of happiness.
http://www.musicalenglishlessons.org/bibi/tables/happiness.htm

Happiness guide – the EFL section
http://www.selfimprovementsguide.com/happiness/efl-happiness.php

The Happy Guy wants you to sign up for a daily dose of happiness. Looks like he wants to sell you something too, but there maybe some useful stuff worth tweaking. I’ll investigate more fully later…
http://www.thehappyguy.com/
EDIT: When you click on this site it will take you to a page trying to sell an ebook. Just click out of it and it will redirect you to the original website.

Quotes about happiness from famous people like: Benjamin Franklin, Tolstoy, Mark Twain & others
http://www.quotegarden.com/happiness.html

In a pinch for a easy to mange lesson? Try this out.
Listen a Minute website
http://www.listenaminute.com/h/happiness.html

This lesson incorporates a one minute audio along with the script, quiz, cloze activity, spelling mistake correction. word jumble, discussion, survey, writing activity and homework.

This blog features a nice relaxing video with happiness quotes, printable worksheet, conversational questions, and reflection activity.
http://esolcourses.blogspot.com/2009/07/english-speaking-practise-happiness.html

Two Canadian guys put out this ESL podcast inspired by a Harvard professor.
http://china232.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=362166

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