WELLBEING & BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS - LESSON 6:

GROWING MY CHARACTER STRENGTHS

 

PART 1- (5 MINUTES)

Rationale

  • individuals who use their character strengths tend to lead happier, more satisfying lives. When you understand your unique strengths, you can you live a life that is more engaging, exciting and rewarding to you. (Peterson and Seligman, 2004)

Learning objectives

By the end of this lesson, learners should:

  • create a list of your own desired character strengths

  • identify and share ways to develop a character strength

PART 2- reflection - (10 minutes)

Students are to respond to the following in their workbook:

Who do you admire most and why? Try to explain some of their character strengths. Use the wheel below to explain what strengths they have, and the impact it has.

PART 3- finding new ways of using strengths- (10 MINUTES)

  • Students are to choose one of their top 5 strengths that they want to develop at this point in their life journey (from survey completed last lesson).

  • With this in mind, they are to check out the relevant section of the "Tips for Using Each Character Strength in a New Way” article (link provided in workbook). Don't read the whole thing, only the section relevant to the strength they most want to develop.

PART 4- cultivating strengths- (10 MINUTES)

  • For the strength that the student has chosen in Part 3, they are to write a one sentence summary of the strength, and two or three ideas on how they can develop / cultivate the strength more in their life (using the "340 ways" article for ideas).

PART 5- share- (5-10 MINUTES)

Find a partner or a small group and share your work with them. Teachers are then to facilitate a discussion with the class, allowing for students to share about the strength and the ideas they have chosen to further develop the strength.

HOME WORK ACTIVITY- SAME STRENGTH, DIFFERENT WAYS

Students are to choose another one of their top strengths and seek out and explore different ways to use (and grow) this strength during the course of the next week. Ideas are recorded in workbooks.