Ready to shift your classroom culture for good? Implement these creative gratitude board ideas and watch as your classroom changes for the better!
It might seem very pie-in-the-sky to say that your entire classroom culture will change because of this one idea, but let's think about it.
Over the past few years, more and more research has been coming out about the science of gratitude. We now know that expressing gratitude can rewire your brain. First, gratitude releases dopamine and serotonin, which means it feels good to count your blessings!
Plus, when you express gratitude, you highlight neurons that focus on the positive things. Since our brains naturally have a negativity bias, this is incredibly powerful!
Beyond that, gratitude exercises can remind us of the people in our lives that we love or who help us. This helps us see our relationships in a more positive light, which can help us look for the good in others (even our frustrating classmates or irritating siblings).
Research consistently links gratitude with positive well-being. People who regularly acknowledge the goodness in their lives (i.e. practise gratitude) tend to be more satisfied, content, resilient, happy, and have a more positive outlook on life. They are less likely to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, envy or discontent. Gratitude also helps individuals to look beyond themselves, building stronger connections between family, friends, colleagues and even strangers.
The Gratitude Project tested this on individuals with mental health challenges, not just well-adjusted, conventionally successful people. They found that writing gratitude letters for four weeks reported a more positive mood for up to 12 weeks after the project ended!
Incorporating Gratitude in the Classroom
What does this mean for you as a classroom teacher? Gratitude is a powerful way to help your students overcome negative thinking, focus on the positive, have a stronger sense of self, and see their relationships more positively.
This doesn't mean every student will respond in the same way, and just throwing together a gratitude bulletin board won't create a cultural shift.
Like anything, gratitude needs to be practised so that it becomes habitual and second nature. In the classroom, we can support our students' social-emotional development and well-being by helping them to develop a life-long habit of gratitude.
The first thing to remember is that you need to incorporate gratitude authentically. It might be nice to make a cute Thanksgiving bulletin board or a gratitude tree, but it needs to be consistent and meaningful, not performative.
Make gratitude a key value in your classroom culture. Come back to it on a daily basis during your classroom meetings and teach students about the science of gratitude and what it means.
If you really take this on with integrity, you'll see a powerful culture of gratitude growing in your classroom that can absolutely change lives! (This may be a fantastic way to help you handle your own stresses as a teacher, too!)
8 Easy Gratitude Board Ideas for the Classroom
One of the easiest ways to practise gratitude every day is to create a gratitude wall and tie it directly into your daily routines. If it's just decorative, that's nice, but for a real change, tie it to your character education and refer to or use your gratitude wall ideas every day!
This will really foster an attitude of gratitude to shift your classroom community.
1. Make an Appreciation Station
This simple gratitude wall display will only take a little space on your wall, but this free Appreciation Station can be a powerful tool that makes a huge difference! Focus on finding a way to incorporate it into your classroom routines every day.
By regularly recording what that they are grateful for and displaying these grateful thoughts in the classroom, students are encouraged to regularly reflect on, and appreciate, the many things that they have to be grateful for.
For example, you can print out a stack of gratitude sheets and have students write a new one each day. You can even place in write and wipe mats, and give each student a designated card to fill out with their dry-erase pens.
You might like to review them together at the end of the day to part ways on a positive, grateful note. At the very least, try to incorporate these simple gratitude prompts once a week.
2. Thankful Tree
Like the Appreciation Station, create a large tree out of paper and add paper leaves with the things you're grateful for daily.
To make it even easier, use red, yellow, and orange-coloured sticky notes and add to them throughout the month. This would be a great display during the Autumn months!
3. Affirmation Station
This is a little different from the other options, but it's an easy way to support that message of positive thinking. Sometimes, our kids are so primed to see the negative that they struggle with even the simplest gratitude challenge activity.
Help your students remember how special, loved, and important they are with this Affirmation Station! These free affirmations were carefully designed to support younger kids with images that match each affirmation. They are available in either rainbow or neutral colours.
4. Rose and Thorn
Have you heard of this expression? The idea is that every day, you check in with your students as a whole class. Learn about what's going on with them and give them a chance to share their lives with their classmates. The rose is something positive that they're thankful for, and the thorn is something concerning or disappointing that they are struggling with.
Although we're trying to reinforce the roses, the thorns are part of life, too and can be a powerful way to help your students show that they care for each other and key you in on important changes.
To turn this into a gratitude board, add a giant paper rose with a thorn on the stem and add bubbles explaining what to share for each one.
5. Ways to Show Gratitude
Sometimes, it's hard to know exactly how to express your gratitude. Fortunately, there are lots of little acts of kindness or generosity you can teach your students like...
- Giving compliments
- Writing thank you notes
- Doing something for someone else
- Keeping a gratitude journal
- Saying "thank you"
- Giving hugs
- Sharing
- Doing good deeds
- Including others in games or conversations
- Cleaning up
6. Gratitude T Chart
This might not be the cutest gratitude board, but it's effective! Make a T-chart with "gratitude" and "not gratitude" on opposite sides. Focus on actions that show gratitude and add anything that doesn't fit the definition in the other column.
This board is a helpful learning tool to reinforce what gratitude actually is so your students can get the full positive effect.
If you teach a lower grade level, you should focus on specific actions instead of concepts. For example, is pushing in your friend's chair a way of showing gratitude? It can also be helpful to talk about the difference between gratitude and kindness.
7. Themed Gratitude Boards
For specific holidays or special events, target how your students are thankful for specific people in their lives.
For example, they can write about their gratitude for their family members for Thanksgiving, or their teacher during Teacher Appreciation Week. These are also a great way to share your gratitude in a common space, like the school library or main office.
There are far more opportunities to show gratitude beyond those groups, so you try making a rotating gratitude board with room to change it out weekly or monthly with different themes!
Feel free to add extra details to make your gratitude a beautiful focal point or add seasonal decorations to change things up.
9. Gratitude Birthday Boards
Take your birthday wall to the next level and add a special kind of board with paper gratitude cards. For younger students, make a poster with the sentence stems below to help them share their thoughts. For every birthday, have your students fill out a card with what they appreciate about the birthday kid.
"I am grateful for ______ because ________"
"I was grateful for _____ when ______."
You can either have your students give the birthday boy or girl their card or have them share their message out loud in front of the class. Seeing your students sharing their appreciation for each other in real-time is amazing!
Some final thoughts...
The more generously your students can share their gratitude, the more they'll develop a habit of gratitude that they carry with them every day.
Although there are so many other ways to express thankfulness and lots of cute bulletin board ideas online, most of those are too brief to make a big difference. They'll invite your students to share their gratitude once, but we need our students to express daily gratitude for a real shift.
Look over your daily schedule or weekly routine to figure out how to incorporate gratitude activities into a daily practice. These simple things can make a huge difference, but only if they become part of the fabric of your classroom.
Looking for more?
The Hive makes it even easier to incorporate daily gratitude into your classroom. In addition to a wide range of digital learning tools for your morning routine (e.g. calendar, days of school, emotions check-in, sharing questions, discussion prompts, affirmations and more), there are also gratitude prompts that you can discuss with your class each day.
Here are few examples:
The Hive also has hundreds of exclusive resources, including these gratitude prompt cards.
Try out all of The Hive's interactive tools, including these gratitude prompts, with a 14 day free trial!
PS - one final tip! Why not extend the gratitude beyond the classroom and into your staffroom as well? Here is an example of a Staff gratitude wall!
These gratitude wall templates can be downloaded for free from Mrs Learning Bee.
