Positive Self-Talk and Re-framing

The words we say out loud have a lasting effect. Once you say something, you can't take it back - not really. This also goes for the things we say to ourselves. As a teacher, I often wish I could get inside the heads of the students so that I could better know how to reach them and teach them.


I can't - but what I can do is have an effect on what they say to themselves. One way to do this is to teach them how to take the negative and fixed-minded things that they say to themselves (and to others), and show them how to re-frame those statements.

Please take a look at this lesson on re-framing and positive self-talk. It took me 55 minutes with an ELL class in a Sacramento HS.  Reframing Lesson

As always, I appreciate your feedback - comment here, or email me :-)

It was EL, so they read the poem several times (in partners, to themselves, in unison, and then they talked about what it meant. – I had it on the LCD projector.)

Then we did the handout and journal-ed on the questions in the boxes. The share-out from that was powerful.

Lastly I showed them how to re-frame about 4 of them, then they did 4 in partners and four alone (we reviewed after 4 each time). Feel free to use it.