The Unteachables Podcast

#149: 3 Thanksgiving activities to beat the November behaviour wobbles

• Claire English • Season 7 • Episode 149

Share episode

Whether you're wrapping up the year in Australia (hi, me too!) or heading into Thanksgiving mode, this one's for the teachers out there who want to keep the vibe high, the connection strong, and the behaviour smooth as the term winds down.

In this episode, I’m giving you a front seat to the actual gratitude-based activities I use with my own students when things start taking an energetic nosedive! 

We’re talking:

🧠 sneaky SEL

💬 beautiful conversations

✍️ creative, calming brain breaks

🎨 and some genuinely lovely wall displays if you’re into that

Whether you're in it for the dopamine hit, the classroom calm, or the end-of-year buy-in, these gratitude strategies are your new best friend.


What you’ll learn:

  • Why gratitude-based tasks are GOLD for classroom management
  • 10 deeper-than-usual conversation starters to use right away
  • How to use these prompts for starters, journaling, or brain breaks
  • 6 mini-tasks that build regulation and community
  • My go-to activity when the class energy is off and I need a circuit-breaker
  • How these “fun” tasks are actually classroom structure in disguise
  • Why gratitude is secretly one of the best proactive behaviour tools you’ve got


Resources Mentioned:

Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!

RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:

Connect with me:


SPEAKER_00:

Oh, hi there, teachers. Welcome to the Unteachables Podcast. I'm your host, Claire English, and I am just a fellow teacher, a toddler mama, and a big old behaviour nerd on a mission to demystify and simplify that little thing called classroom management. The way we've all been taught to manage behaviour and classroom manage has left us playing crowd control, which is not something I subscribe to because we're not bouncers, we're teachers. So listen in as I walk you through the game-changing strategies, and I mean the things that we can actually do and action in our classrooms that will allow you to lean into your beautiful values as a compassionate educator and feel empowered to run your room with a little more calm and dare I say it, a lot less chaos. I will see you in the episode. Hello, teacher friends. Welcome back to the Unteachables Podcast. It is fabulous to have you here again. If you're a first-time listener, hello, my name's Claire. And if you're listening, I think it's pretty obvious that I am in fact Australian. And as an Australian, I don't celebrate Thanksgiving like in other parts of the world. However, what I do at this time of year is just increase the amount of activities that I kind of dot into the school day or dot into our lessons that just help my students stay connected. It keeps a buy-in high. It helps to foster that community, especially in late November, December, as the year's winding down. You know, teaching students with more complex social, emotional, and mental health needs means that they might not be looking forward to the break, or they might miss that community, or they might be just whatever, right? Like it's just a nice way to embed a bit of SEL work, keep things running smoothly. I specifically do things around mindset and gratitude, and I find that that is golden at this time of year. It really helps all of us stay connected and just wind down in a really positive way. However, it is Thanksgiving month, and a lot of you out there do celebrate Thanksgiving. So I really wanted to do something specific for you that was going to help in your classroom. But if you are listening and like me, you're an Aussie or a Kiwi or you know are from a country that doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving, please take these activities and you can still do these in your classroom as we go into those final like stretches of 2025. And I can't believe I am saying that. So if that does sound like a bit of you, then stick with me because this episode I really wanted to share some of my favorite activities and questions and just things that help keep gratitude and classroom management front and center as we move into the end of the year. You can use these, by the way, as Thanksgiving tasks, starters, brain breaks, exit tasks, as just a way to fill in those five minutes of dead air time or you know, to kick into something to get a little bit of buy-in or just to get a little bit of engagement if things feel wobbly and you need to get things back on track for the lesson. You can use these in whatever way you want. So get a pen and paper ready and let's get started. The first thing that I absolutely love using are my gratitude conversation questions. And you can use them for conversations, obviously, like pair students up, give them a card, and allow them to have time to discuss the question. You can use it in a concentric circle fashion so each person like has a card and you kind of move around. Uh, you can use them for daily whole class discussion starters if you want to do like an attendance question style thing. You can use them for morning meetings or reflection time, uh SEL activities, you can use them as journal prompts or written reflections. You can use these in so many different ways. I have used them before as starters. I generally use them as like a kind of five-minute brain break for students to stop what they're doing and have a chat about one question per day as we lead into the end of the year. But you can use them in whatever way you want, in whatever way suits your class, okay? So the kind of questions that I do use, I have these as cards. Like so I've got like 30, I think it's like 32 conversation cards that I use year-round. Um, but they also come in like a Thanksgiving theme. So if you're in the Behavior Club, they're in your resource area this month, or I'll drop the link in the show notes. For any of the resources I mentioned this episode, you can get them in the show notes or inside of the behavior club, or you can just jot down these questions and use them immediately in your own way. That is also fine. I'll share 10 of the card questions that I use. By the way, I'm not tooting my own horn, but the reason why I love these questions is because when we talk about gratitude, very often we kind of just go, what are you grateful for? What are three things you're thankful for? And I really wanted to go deeper than that, and I wanted to create questions for students that have them actually thinking about things they're grateful for in a way that's not getting them to say, Hey, I'm grateful for this. Like just really kind of dig deeper into it. So here are the questions. I'm really dragging this out, aren't I? So the first one, describe a memory you will cherish forever. Two, what is the best thing you own and why do you love it? That's one of my students' favorite questions. Every time I have that question in the deck, everyone loves it. The third one, what's something in nature that you think is beautiful? Fourth, what does your body do that you're happy about or you're grateful for or that you're thankful for? The fifth thing, what's your favorite way to relax? Six, what is something that you are glad for every single day? Seven, how do you make life better and brighter for other people? Eight, if you had to give away all of your memories except one memory, which one would you keep and why? Nine, list everything in the classroom you're grateful for. I love that one, or list things you're grateful for about school. It just challenges them to look at the little things around, like they look at a ruler, why are they grateful for that? They look at like, you know, the water bottle or they look at the clock and they just think differently about the objects around them. And number 10, pick one person in the class. What is one thing you appreciate about them? So those are just 10 of my 32 gratitude questions. Again, you can use them in whatever way you like. My favorite way is as a little just chat brain break throughout November and December, where I pick, usually it's in December for me, where I every lesson just say, okay, my the five-minute break, we're all gonna have one of these questions and we're gonna talk to the person next to us about it, or we can get into a circle today and do it that way, um, or we can journal about this question. But generally just choose one per day and I focus on that one. The next thing that I love doing is using gratitude mini tasks. These are perfect to use as starters, brain breaks, finishes, journal prompts, pretty much everything I'm talking about, you can use in this way depending on your class. But these are just five-minute kind of pen-to-paper activities where students can sit down, complete it, you can talk about them. But again, the reason why I love these gratitude mini activities is because it helps them to see what they're grateful for and helps them appreciate things and gets that dopamine boost without saying, okay, let's write a gratitude list again. It's something that, you know, it's covert. I don't know if that's the best kind of way to describe it, but you know, it's like a covert operation for gratitude. It's like getting them to think about what they're grateful for without saying, what are you grateful for? Okay, these are, I think I put six down here to share with you. So the first one is waking up to a new life. Imagine waking up tomorrow and nothing was the same. You lived in a different place with different people and had to start all over again. What would you miss about your current life and why? I love this because we can get so bogged down. Even when I was creating these tasks, I did them myself because I always like to live the lesson. That is also a very important thing, like classroom management-wise, and just for pedagogy, like sitting down and actually doing the work that you're gonna give to your students and you can really see the holes in it. But I always do things when I create them. And I was doing this when I'm like, oh wow, okay, maybe I need to like, you know, appreciate certain things in my life a little bit more. The second thing, one simple thing. So look around the room and choose a random object. Write a list as long as you can explain why you're grateful for having that particular thing in your life. Again, I just love this kind of task because it's allowing us to kind of see the things that we would usually take for granted. So I'm just looking around right now and I can see a pillow, and I'm like, oh my gosh, like I could write a list as long as a hundred reasons why I am grateful to have a pillow, and that would then bleed into other things I'm grateful for, and it just expands the way that we see the little things that we generally would overlook in our day. And that's really great. That's a really great one for then sharing as a class. The next one, gratitude snapshot. Close your eyes and replay a happy moment from your life, like a photo. Who was there? Who are you with? What did you feel? Write a list of the things in that memory that you're grateful for. The next one is blackout. This is another one of my favorites. Imagine all electricity was cut off for a week. What would you miss the most? Write down as many things as you can think of. I'm sure that, you know, all of us can write a huge list for that one. And it just again allows us to go back to the things that we're grateful for that we really aren't always thinking about, that we might take for granted. The next thing is gratitude garden. Create a gratitude garden, draw flowers on your page with each flower or petal, something that you're grateful for. Try to make your garden as big as possible. I like this one just because it's quite creative. And as somebody who likes to doodle and kind of like sketch things out, it really does like kind of tap into that with some students, and it can be such a beautiful, mindful task. So you can make this longer, you can make this a longer task than just five minutes. I've actually got a resource that is Gratitude Garden, and each student gets like a series of flowers that they have to kind of decorate and fill in, and then we put those flowers up on the wall in the classroom. And if you're in the behaviour club, that activity is in there and it's in my um Thanksgiving bundle as well. But it's just such a beautiful way to visually represent the things that we are grateful for in our class, in our life. And the last one, what makes life easier? Write a list of things that make life easier for you. Try to make it as long as possible. I love this one because again, like just thinking about the things that we take for granted every single day, like being able to get into a car and drive to the shops, or being able to turn a tap on and get water out of the tap and having a cup that's made that we can drink out of, having a blanket, like there are so many things that it just would start such a beautiful class discussion as well. So use it as a starter. Students sit there five minutes, do this task, and then you can spend the rest, like you know, another five minutes as a class, like kind of just talking about the things that do make our life easier that we don't usually think about, we might overlook. Okay, that is my mini tasks. Again, you can use them as starters, you can use them as like journal prompts, as a way to start class discussions. A really nice way to do that. Okay, the final activity that I wanted to share that I absolutely love doing at this time of year is my gratitude plate. So I have a printout of a plate, and I've got a couple of prompts there. And students just write or draw the things that they're grateful for on that plate. I like to frame it as like their ingredients for feeling happy and grateful and fulfilled. You can just kind of get a plate template like off Canva and print it out and just get students to do it that way. Or if you would like to grab mine, I've got a free download that you can use. You can just go to the dashunteachables.com forward slash Thanksgiving freebie. I just wanted to share that one because it's a really simple activity, but you can use them to like you can use it as a whole lesson, and you can cut them out and you can pop them on the wall again, and then it's just showing the like as a representation of the things that the class is grateful for, really boosting that class community, and just it's just such a beautiful activity to do as the year draws to a close. Like it just looks visually beautiful. Students can decorate it, just draw, they can do whatever, and I like it because it's really expressive. So the dashonteachables.com forward slash Thanksgiving freebie, and you can download it there. I also have done it before, like with a cup, so you can just print out like a you know, a cup outline and get students to fill in what they're grateful for inside of the cup, what fills their cup, and then again you can send it home, you can have it as a display in the classroom, you can use it as a way to start discussions between students. It's just great, you know, it's just a really versatile activity. So that's another one that I do. I do that when I want to spend a little bit more time on something, or I actually do use this if I've had like if I feel like it's a bit of a dodgy day. I think you know what I mean when I say dodgy day, when the weather's a bit off, when everyone's really unsettled, and I'm like, oh, okay, this lesson is going to be hard. I'm gonna use this lesson as my gratitude plate lesson, and they'll come in and we'll just spend 20 minutes doing their gratitude plates, and it's so regulating. It's such a lovely, calming activity, and it really does help me with my classroom management coming into the end of the year. And this podcast episode, I did mention that it is good for classroom management and behavior. The reason why I say that, number one, because yes, all of these things can be pen to paper, calming, regulating activities. It's really good for mindfulness, it's really great for us being able to do an activity where they have buy-in to because it's about them and they're thinking about themselves. And anytime we're getting students to think about them and their own lives, they have more buy-in and they're more willing to do it. It's just great at this time of year to have something in your toolbox that you know is going to be a winner with your class, but also really like beneficial in terms of SEL and community building and mindfulness and all of those wonderful things that we can bring for our students as well. So that was just a few things I do during the Thanksgiving gratitude end of year season. But if you are looking for more and all of the resources for these things, all done for you in the most beautiful way possible because I am a freaking resourcing machine lately, it's my favorite thing to do. Of course, I will just pop all of the links to those in the show notes for you, or you can just head straight to the dashonteachables.shop and everything will be there. And if you're in the Behavior Club, of course, they're just all included this month. So please just pop over and find them in the current month or the resource hub. But remember, teachers, whatever you do when it comes to resources and activities during the Thanksgiving season or any festive season whatsoever, or leading up to the end of the year, you can have fun, you can do something that's on theme for the festive season, but just keep the structure, keep the routines. We spoke a lot about routines last podcast episode. So if you didn't listen to that podcast episode, I strongly encourage you to go back and listen to that because those are the things that are going to keep your classroom management machine working as we near the end of the year. You can keep all of those things and you can just dress them up. So when I say about all of those activities, you can use them as a starter activity, as a brain break activity, as an exit task for them to do before they leave the room. They're all routines, they're all things that I would do anyway in my classroom. So when I say we're doing a starter, students know already automatically all of the expectations around a starter activity. When I say we're gonna do a brain break, they know the expectations. When I say we're going to do this as an exit task, again, it's not just like a reactive, oh, I'm really tired, let's just do this random task. It's actually embedded in the bones of what I've already established within my classroom management. So I think that's a really great takeaway for everybody. Do it, do the fun things, just make sure you keep the predictability and the structure around it. Okay, that's it. And I will be back next week with another dose of classroom management goodness. And I hope today's episode just gave you like even just one idea for one activity that you can do this week or have up your sleeve to get a bit of buy in and fun or mindfulness or just a gratitude or community boost happening in your classroom this week. Until next time, keep sprinkling all of that glorious classroom management magic all over the place. Peace out.

Head Shot

Claire English

Host