Happy & Unhappy Sentence Strip Activity
Teaching idea: Cut and Paste to a Word document (for enlargement purposes) print it out and cut into sentence strips. Print a master copy of your happy sentences and number it. Be sure to number the individual sentence strips too. That way you can call out the number and the pairs can share with the class without giving away the sentence (oooo the suspense of it all.) 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 all others around you catch 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 them 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 then 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.)
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
Really nice teaching idea, thank you.
Happiness is a state of mind that really depends how we see the situations in our lives each day. you can have all the riches in the world but still see it as a lonely place.,;,