SPARK Gratitude is a ten-day gratitude activities program for elementary schools and organizations that serve elementary school students. We teach students how gratitude works in their brains so they can use it to build resiliency, connection and appreciation.
What is SPARK Gratitude?
Spark Gratitude is a highly engaging ten-day gratitude-boosting initiative for elementary schools that focuses on building appreciation, resilience, and connection through fun gratitude activities. Any school or organization focused on growing grateful kids and boosting brains, resilience and community will love SPARK Gratitude. It’s research-based and CASEL aligned to support student social-emotional learning. This gratitude-based brain-aware learning helps build stronger learning communities.
With SPARK Gratitude’s easy-to-implement gratitude-boosting activities and reflections, schools and organizations will help their students:
Build an active practice of appreciation and gratitude
Build resilience skills that help them bounce back from adversity more quickly
Understand the brain benefits and neurological aspects of practicing gratitude
Grow connected to their classroom and school as a whole
Develop and boost self-awareness, social awareness, relationship building, responsible decision-making and self-management skills
How Does SPARK Gratitude Work?
SPARK Gratitude was created to fit into your school community or organization in a way that makes sense and is meaningful to the stakeholders in your learning community. We provide everything you need to feel confident with your gratitude program, including:
Introduction: Your educators will learn how gratitude works in the brain and get a day-by-day breakdown of what to do over the ten-day program.
CASEL standards and objectives: Every activity comes with CASEL standards and objectives, making it a breeze to document.
Caregiver Kickoff Letter: Simple print and go!
Daily Announcements: We provide ten days of morning announcements, one for each day. Read them aloud as a whole-school announcement or in each classroom. We color-coded and broke each into three small, readable sections for student readers for those who want student involvement.
Daily Gratitude Activities: Each day has a highly engaging gratitude-boosting group activity that’s also aligned with SEL skill-building. Students will use cooperation, deductive reasoning, critical thinking, reflection, communication, movement, emotional regulation and constructive contribution in their daily gratitude activities.
Daily Writing Reflections: Each day’s gratitude activity has a reflective journal component to increase self-awareness, gratitude, intervention skill-building and writing skills. Each writing reflection allows students to connect and develop self-expression of appreciative feelings.
Brain Spark Cards: Staff and students can give these to each other to spark the brain-building skill of reaching, feeling, connecting and sharing gratitude.
Mindful Movements: Kick-off and wrap-up mindful movement activities that you can do in a classroom setting or as a large group. Student engagement will spark creative thinking, innovation, inclusion, resilience, and peer collaboration in all activities.
Community Project: Over the course of ten days, you’ll make an all-school or organization project that will show your commitment to understanding and growing gratitude.
Gratitude Interventions in Schools
Statistics tell us that student stress levels are at an all-time high. Practicing gratitude helps brains and bodies manage and decrease stress, anxiety, and illness. This reduction can help wire brains to look for more gratitude and kindness in ourselves and others.
The more we practice gratitude, the more we carve out the neurological “superhighway” of gratitude brain connections. This connection will actually cause us to look for more thankful opportunities instead of negativity or problems.
Often, gratitude interventions (GI) have been thought of as feel-good interventions to boost student morale. While that may be true, GI can assist with developing social-emotional skills and brain-building skills and habits to support mental and physical well-being.
Studies have shown that students in GI classes have improved well-being outcomes, mental health, social awareness and self-awareness (Bono G., Mangan S., Fauteux M., Sender J., 2020). Gratitude has also been shown to help increase focus and resilience (Wilson, J. T., 2016). We should consider gratitude a trait, state, and developable skill beneficial to the individual and the community.
SPARK Gratitude Pricing
We offer a simple and affordable pricing structure!
$497 for one site for any school or organization. (Bundle with three schools and you’ll each save $100!)
For a limited time, we’re also including Be Grateful: 21 Gratitude-Boosting Family Activities for all students at no extra cost so your gratitude boost can be a home/school experience, furthering the power of gratitude!
Ways to Fund SPARK Gratitude
Apply for a grant. If funding is an issue, we encourage you to apply for any available grants and suggest you start with the Education Foundation in your district or your PTA. Here is a sample grant application form we helped fill out. Feel free to use any part of it in your grant application! If you need extra info, we’re happy to help! Please email us at hello@therootedschool.com.
Do a Book & Breathe fundraiser. Book & Breathe is a themed story and yoga session for students. Along with raising funds for your school or organization, the goal of Book & Breathe is to help kids grow in their resiliency, growth mindset and goal setting. There are no up-front costs to host a Book & Breathe fundraiser! And, your school or organization can earn upwards of 90% of the funds raised!
Form a business partnership. We have found that businesses are often interested in helping their local schools. If you have a business partnership formed, reach out and ask them. This is a low-cost way for them to make a big difference in their community, and there are benefits to businesses that support schools. If you don’t have a partnership, you might find it easier than you think to form one.
Bonus: Sign up with other schools. This one won’t get you fully funded, but it will save you money! When three schools sign up together, they each get $100 off, making it $397 a school. Reach out to other schools in your school district or neighboring school districts and save!
Learn More About the Power of Gratitude
Studies:
Giacomo Bono, Susan Mangan, Michael Fauteux & Jason Sender (2020) A new approach to gratitude interventions in high schools that supports student wellbeing, The Journal of Positive Psychology, 15:5, 657-665, DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2020.1789712 Froh, J.J., Bono, G. & Emmons, R.
Being grateful is beyond good manners: Gratitude and motivation to contribute to society among early adolescents. 34, 144–157 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-010-9163-z Wilson, J. T. (2016).
Brightening the Mind: The Impact of Practicing Gratitude on Focus and Resilience in Learning. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 16(4), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.14434/josotl.v16i4.19998