Gratitude in the Classroom

With Thanksgiving coming up, it’s a good time to practice some gratitude. Research on gratitude has shown that regular practicing gratitude (thinking about what you’re grateful for) enjoy lots of benefits, including having better physical health! They sleep better, feel better about themselves, and have more mental resilience.  

Here are two weeks of daily gratitude questions you can pose to your class leading up to Thanksgiving break that can help motivate students to look for the good around them. We threw in some options in case some don’t work for you. There are lots of options with this:

  • Students privately journal 
  • Students write their answers on slips of paper and drop into a bowl
  • Create a class gratitude poster every day
  • Students think about their answer and then talk to one or two other people they don’t usually talk within the class. 

We recommend that you NOT force students to share but that you DO participate yourself — modeling is the best teaching when it comes to social and emotional learning.


12 Gratitude Questions to Ask Your Students

  1. Name a food you’re grateful for. Any specific reason?
  2. Name a place in the neighborhood or in your home that you’re grateful for. Why?
  3. Name a person in school with whom you don’t talk a lot but who you think is admirable. Why?  
  4. What is your favorite time of day? Why?
  5. What’s something that you own that you’re grateful for? Why?
  6. What’s something that happened to you in the past year that you’re grateful for? Why are you grateful for that event?
  7. What holiday do you like the most? Why?
  8. What’s a song or movie that makes you happy? Why?
  9. What’s your favorite season of the year? Why?
  10. What’s something about your body that you’re grateful for? 
  11. What’s something that’s been hard for you but that you’re grateful for? Why?
  12. Who is a person who has been helpful to you? How?


We’d love to hear how it goes – email us at info@empoweringeducation.org – and let us know if you have other gratitude prompts or share any pics you have.