ASSIGNMENT 4: Aulas Felices

Activities for strategic investment & to lower anxiety in the classroom:
(See Aulas Felices)

According to “Aulas Felices", this is an innovative program in the Secondary Education that studies the “Positive Psychology”, to renew the educative practice from a scientific knowledge. This deals with the science of Happiness. The aim of this program is to develop the positive aspects of the students and their strength in order to improve them.

Now, I will show three examples of activities according to this program and the positive psychology, which can be used in Secondary Education:

1.     An emotional kidnapping.

Objectives:

To analyse and learn to control the intense negative emotions, to approach the knowledge of the biologic bases of our emotions.

Development:

Sometimes, we witness situations in TV in which certain apparently peaceful people commit extremely aggressive actions. Even we have moments where we’re carried along by intensive negative emotions such as the rage, anger, hate, aggressiveness… and do certain things that we later regret, arguing that “I was unaware of what I did, I didn’t even know it”. According to Goleman (1995), this is called an “emotional kidnapping”.

Secondary Education students can study this topic by telling them a summary such as the one explained above, or giving them some passages from a book by Goleman, in order to teach them to understand the role our brain plays in the regulation of the behaviour.

Once they have learned this topic, we can analyse some news from Internet or newspapers in which there is one case of this situations, or maybe they can tell a personal experience. From all of this, we’ll debate about these questions:

-         What causes make the author of that behaviour to act like that?

-         How could he have acted in order to not be carried away by his/her emotions?

-         Why was he/she unable to control him/herself?

-         Can this happen to all of us?

-         What can we do in order to better control our emotions?

Finally, we’ll conclude the activity by doing a list of possible actions to improve our self-control, such as to use relaxation techniques, to breathe deeply, etc. This activity can be done by pairs or small groups, and be shared commonly later on.

Resources: News from the Internet or newspapers. 

Time: 1h

[Page 230 from the book "Aulas Felices"]

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2.     The virtue: the just middle between two extremes.

Level: This activity implemented in the last cycle of Primary Education, and in Secondary Education as well.  

Objectives:

To analyse and learn to regulate the behaviours without falling into defects nor excesses.

Development:

According to Aristotle, the virtuous behaviour is characterised by being the just middle between two extremes equally pernicious, by defect or excess.

We can start this activity by telling this quote to the students and giving them an example: a virtue such as the courage, whose defect would be the fear and its excess the rashness. In this case, the virtuous behaviour consists in facing the difficulties and dangers with resolution and care, without falling into the fear that stops us nor the lack of thought which lead us to reckless conducts.

Later, students should be divided into groups in order to fill in a table in which they will be given only a virtue, and they will have to find out the two extremes corresponding.

E.g.:

Then, students will share their answers to the rest of the class, and they will debate about these two questions:

-         Regarding the examples analysed, is the statement of Aristotle true?

-         In the real life, is the existence of the opposite poles so crystal clear?

To conclude the activity, we can ask the students to choose one of the virtues in the table, or the virtue they want, which they consider important for their life. Then, each student will have to develop the chosen value without falling into the extremes.

Resources: Synonym and antonym dictionaries, computers, Word. 

Time: 1h

[Page 229, "Aulas Felices"] 

(I’ve chosen these two activities because they are a way to know oneself better and to try to control our emotions, which is something very difficult in this age, in the teenagers).

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3.     I’m someone very special.

Objectives: 

Improve the self-esteem. Think about characteristics we like about ourselves and the others.  

Development:

In this activity, students will describe themselves orally, stressing the positive aspects.

Later, in one sheet of paper, students will write a description of themselves (the more positive, the better), with the title “I, [name] am someone very special”.

Later on, each student will try to describe orally someone in a positive way. Then, each student will write a comment or positive sentence from each classmate. (The teacher will revise these texts in order to make clear that there’re only positive comments).

Later, it will be a piece of paper with the name of the students named “My friend… is someone very special”, which will be filled by the students. They will write something positive about the others.

Resources: Colourful sheets of paper.

Time: 1h.

 [Page 167, "Aulas Felices"]

(I’ve chosen this activity because it deals with the self-esteem, something very important in the adolescence, as most teenagers have a low self-esteem and it can help them see that all of us are important and have something positive, and it will improve their self-esteem).