Activity: Stating an Opinion—World Smile Day®
- Students - paper, pen
- Teacher - whiteboard, chalkboard, or large pieces of paper taped to wall; chalk or markers; sample letter(s)
Background
Each year, on the first Friday of October, World Smile Day® celebrates smiles and kind acts around the world.
Many people recognize the iconic yellow smiley face image. What many people don't know, however, is that the creator of that smiley face - Harvey Ball - is also the person who started World Smile Day®. Once his happy smiley face image started to become too commercialized, Ball created World Smile Day®
Goals
Letter writing is a useful skill for students to learn. They help students use English for a purpose and for authentic communication. Because there is a real, intended reader of the letter, the learning becomes more meaningful for the student writing the letter. For World Smile Day®, the focus of the letter will be gratitude; each student will write a letter of thanks to someone who has positively affected or shown kindness toward him/her, or made him/her smile often.
During this activity, students will be able to:
- use standard informal letter-writing format to express their gratitude toward someone in their lives
- use English phrases to show positive consequences of a person's actions
Level
Intermediate
Preparation
Have a prepared gratitude letter to share as a model letter for the students; this can either be as a handout or as a large sheet to post on the wall.
Directions
- Put students into pairs or small groups.
- Ask students to tell their partner or group about someone who has shown them kindness or made them smile often.
- Hand out copies of model letter (or use a large sheet of paper taped to the wall with a model letter pre-written on the paper) to show the format of an informal letter to students.
- Students brainstorm a list of people in their lives to whom they could write a letter of gratitude. Have each student list at least three possible recipients of a letter of gratitude. Then, in pairs, students explain why each person on his/her list warrants receiving a letter of gratitude. Each student then chooses one recipient of the letter of gratitude he/she is about to write.
- Ask students to work individually and write their own gratitude letter of thanks to someone who has shown kindness toward him/her or made him/her smile often. Ask students to include the following in their letter:
- What exactly the person did
- Why what they did is important
- How what they did has:
- a) Helped you: for example, a teacher's extra tutoring helped a student succeed in her classes;
OR - b) Changed you: for example, a coach encouraged an athlete to train in a new way, making her a more successful athlete;
OR - c) Made you feel better: for example, a friend who always listened to her friend's problems during a difficult time
- a) Helped you: for example, a teacher's extra tutoring helped a student succeed in her classes;
- Write some useful phrases on board (or have them pre-written on large paper to tape to
the wall) to help students with ways to structure their sentences and show the positive consequences of the person's actions. - “This is important to me because…”
- “I appreciate that you…”
- “As a result of your kindness, I…”
Adapt It To Your Class
- Guide your students through a peer review/speaking activity of their written letters. In pairs, students read each other's letter. After, each student asks his/her partner three questions about the information within the letter, and the partner answers after each. They then switch. The goals of this activity are: active reading and verbal communication.
- For lower level students, have a letter template made in which they are given more structure and more language in the letter, and they fill in blanks to complete the letter and make it personal.
- To build class cohesion, the letters can be written to other students in the class, thanking them for making the letter writer smile or showing kindness.