Assignment 4: Three activities from "Aulas Felices"

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Our fourth assignment deals with the book "Aulas Felices", in which several activities are proposed to apply positive psychology to the educational setting. In other words, this book displays different activities for different levels (Primary and Secondary Education) in which an optimistic and kind atmosphere is trying to be achieved. 

Thus, this assignment consists on the selection of three activities from this book for strategic investment and to lower anxiety in the classroom. I have decided to select activities which can be applied to Secondary Education, since this is the educational setting I will be working in the future. Moreover, I have chosen activities in which students can develop their critical thinking to analyse real-life realia or material and draw their own conclusions.

The first activity selected is called "Publicidad y contrapublicidad" (p. 91), in which students are required to bring to class examples about controversial advertisements in which they can observe real-life problems or inequalities like sexism, pollution or damage to nature. During the lesson, they have to analyse them, talk about the problems they find and create a "positive reply" or a "positive version" of them. I personally believe that, with the use of this activity, students can learn to be critical about what they see, hear or read on the news or on newspapers. Moreover, if there is a certain topic students find interesting in this advertisements, it can be used for further research or to do a kind of project or another activity.

The second activity chosen is "¿Qué harías tú?" (p. 114). In this task, students have to think about a conflict they have experienced and talk about possible solutions in class. It would be better if the conflict affects the whole class, since students can reflect on it and think of ways to solve it that can later be applied to their real lives. I reckon this activity can be useful to lower anxiety in the classroom, since the teacher can tackle real problems affecting students and they can find ways to solve them and thus, students will feel better when these problems finish.

The third activity is "Aceptando a todos" (p. 181). It is a bit similar to the previous one, but in this task, students have to write in a sheet of paper situations in which they have felt lonely or in which a classmate has been excluded. The aim of the activity is to reflect on students' attitude when they are affected by this problem. During the week, students have to help a partner so that s/he can feel integrated and comfortable within the group. I think this activity can be quite interesting to make students think about all these situations and how they can take part in solving them. The anxiety in the classroom setting will also be lowered, since students will develop a sense of partnership and belonging to the class.

To conclude, I consider that all these activities can be useful for allowing students to think about their real-life problems and to find solutions to them. Once they are able to do so, they will feel more comfortable with themselves and thus, the anxiety in the classroom will decrease, as students' attitude will be more positive.

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