Gratitude Activities We Love

Happy almost Thanksgiving! This has been an incredibly long fall, especially for teachers. Even when we are beyond tired, it is always a good time to remind people (including ourselves) to give thanks and reflect on what we are grateful for. We like to share with students that there are many benefits to giving thanks including our own mental and physical health. But first and foremost, it’s important to appreciate the people in our lives who take care of us and keep us safe.

• Make thank you cards. My class will be working on thank you cards for many of the staff in our school building, especially the custodians who clean up after us every single day as well as the kitchen staff who cooks for us. If you don’t know everyone’s name, find time to introduce yourself, learn how their name is spelled, and how they like to be addressed. Most of the people who clean our building prefer to speak in Spanish, so I’ve had one of the Spanish teachers help us get started with some example phrases of appreciation in the past.

• A parent sent in “My First Gratitude Journals” for my entire class this year, which was so kind and generous! The journals have a page per day with some different entry formats. We gave them to the students on Friday and had them fill out one entry and will do so on Monday and Tuesday before sending them home for Thanksgiving break. Students who fill out more pages during the break can bring them in and share. We’re hoping the repeated use will lead to a habit.

• In My Map Book by Sara Fanelli (which is a great book for some many uses and my students LOVE it), the author includes a “Map of My Heart.” We are going to have students make their own maps of their hearts, focusing on who we love and are grateful for. 

• So many writing prompts! If you want to be extra cute you can make a turkey or something Thanksgiving themed (making sure there are NO cartoon Native Americans or anything like that) and have students write one thing they are grateful for on each turkey feather etc. Sometimes, it’s easier for younger students to think about things that have made them happy recently and go from there. Some prompts that I’ve used in the past are: I am thankful for, I am grateful for, Some things that made me happy recently are.. 

• Appreciation webs: we’ve made these in the past for co-workers’ birthdays, going away posters, or just for fun. In the middle of the web, you write something like “I/we appreciate _________ because..” and students fill in reasons. This can be done with writing or drawing for the really little ones. You can also use whatever verb works for you - appreciate, love, am grateful for, admire, will miss, etc. 

• Compliment or appreciation shares: We usually have an appreciation circle when it is someone’s birthday. For our Morning Meeting greeting, we all say what we appreciate about the person whose birthday we are celebrating. I’ve also written all my students’ names on slips of paper and passed them out at random and you write a compliment or appreciation for whomever’s name you receive. This might be a nice activity to end with heading into the break.

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Thanksgiving & Native American Heritage Month Resources & Reminders

Resources & Great Place to Start

American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL) 

Teaching for Change 2021 Indigenous Peoples’ Day Curriculum Teach-In (especially the section about Native Voices in Children’s Literature by Dr. Debbie Reese, the creator of AICL)

Native American Heritage Month Resources For Teachers

Our ideas for addressing Thanksgiving in 3rd grade this year

(on top of expressing gratitude to all the people who take care of us at school):

• The word Indigenous - explained l CBC Kids News

• Newsela article: A Native American poet reimagines Thanksgiving and the poem referenced in the article: America, I Sing You Back by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke

•  Read aloud: We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorell

• We also just bought two new books that we are VERY excited about:

  • Classified, The Secret Career of Mary Golda Ross, Cherokee Aerospace Engineer by Traci Sorell

  • JoJo Makoons by Dawn Quigley (an early middle grade series with a Native American main character!)

General Tips for Choosing Resources about Native Americans

1. Look at publication dates.  In general, older (sometimes “classic”) books tend to have stereotypical portrayals of Native American peoples or kids dressing up as “Indians” or playing “Indian” games.  

   1. Some examples: Little House on the Prairie, George and Martha (George dresses up as an “Indian”).  We are not saying you cannot use these books, but be prepared to address the problematic images, language, or events.

2. Avoid anything stereotypical, overly simplistic, or cartoonish (think of the Cleveland Indians logo).

3. Look at IMAGES of Native peoples depicted in the books. Does every Indigenous person look exactly the same? Are the characters displayed as 'savage' 'non-human' in some way? Avoid the “how” hand gesture, tomahawks, gratuitous headdresses, dancing around a fire, taking hostages, etc.

4. Ask yourself these questions:

   1. Who wrote this piece? (Even Encyclopedia Britannica articles can be used as examples of problematic language/bias). Use the resources list and look FIRST for Indigenous voices on the topic. 

   2. Does the author/illustrator specify a tribal nation?

   3. What is the time period? 

   4. Is the history accurate? How do I know? 

   5. How does the author/illustrator present gender?

   6. Does the author's word choice indicate bias against Native peoples?

   7. (Some of these questions are from Tips for Choosing Culturally Appropriate Books & Resources About Native Americans).

5. Be mindful of the language used (by the resource and by you): avoid the words chief, squaw, savage, natives, and remember that “Native Americans” refers to thousands of diverse tribes (which means thousands of different cultures and histories) and not just one group of people. 

6. Make sure to proactively balance historical representation of Native American peoples with contemporary voices so as not to perpetuate the idea that American Indians only existed in the past. If a piece speaks of Indigenous peoples only in the past tense-- double triple check why it does that and why you are using it! 

7. Remember that many Indigenous peoples are Americans and were the first Americans.

8. Avoid resources (or saying yourself) that say "We are all immigrants". Not all of us are. Utilizing that immigrant 'melting pot' rhetoric as the foundational metaphor of the US erases the (long) history of Indigenous Americans. 

For more details and tips, please see Tips for Choosing Culturally Appropriate Books & Resources About Native Americans andUnderstanding Prejudice: Teaching About Native American Issues

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Unexpected thanks and support from a parent

This week, we shared a note in our all school newsletter about our presentation at the White Privilege Conference.  We were surprised and touched when a parent of a former student came to tell us she read our newsletter addition and she was so happy to hear about us sharing our work with a larger audience!  

Apparently, our work with her child last year changed the way she thought about inequity, structural poverty, racism and more. This has impacted her role as a teacher at an inter-faith Sunday school as they now do activities that she said she never would have thought of before we taught her child. She said that from experiential activities even the young students were able to understand more abstract concepts because they were engaged and felt something. She was thrilled to see that we are  reaching other adults and educators.

It's always lovely to hear positive memories from a former student or parent, but knowing we inspired other social justice teaching was even better!  Thank you for making our day. Keep us posted on the awesome work you all are doing out there!