MariaVlachopoulou

Martin E.P. Seligman, an internationally known psychologist, of the Positive Psychology movement, introduced the PERMA model of well-being (2011), in which psychological well-being is defined in terms of five elements: positive emotions (P), engagement (E), relationships (R), meaning (M), and accomplishment (A). According to Seligman having PERMA equals flourishing.   According to Peterson (2006) schools are ideal institutions to provide opportunities for these elements and they should start focusing not only on academic learning but also the promotion of character and well-being. Let’s see what the acronym PERMA stands for and how we can link each element to our teaching:   POSITIVE EMOTIONS (P) Positive emotions are directly linked to happiness. Positive emotions coming from positive thinking and optimism help us feel less depressed when bad events occur and focus on the good things, make us feel better about ourselves and thus stronger and more confi...

(This is part of my article published in the summer e-bulletin of TESOL Macedonia Thrace Northern Greece. You can read the rest there, if you are a TESOL MTh member) ...However, even if you follow all these tips, students may not always share your enthusiasm for writing. This is the time when you have to employ some other means to get them interested! I call these “My contemporary Muses”, because they inspire my students to write! Here are some web tools I am using for my writing activities: ·          Storybird.com : This must be the most popular web tool for story writing at the moment.  Students can choose a set of pictures and write their stories based on these. I can personally guarantee that even the most reluctant to participate get excited with this! The art is so wonderful and there is not one student who will not be interested in turning picture prompts into a story. Recently, I have discovered that there is also the op...