200 Reasons to Live - Part 3

During summer vacations and after researching, I had gathered enough material to start writing a teen’s daily devotional entitled: “200 Reasons to live.”

Best Practices October 15, 2018

#Thewritingchallenge

Right after the school year ended, I began to do a research to find reasons teenagers have to live or why they shouldn’t think about putting an end to their lives. During the research, I found many reasons why teenagers should see life as the best option. As for me, I was ready to start writing a daily devotional for teenagers for the next school year.

During summer vacations and after researching, I had gathered enough material to start writing a teen’s daily devotional entitled: “200 Reasons to live.” The main aim of the devotional was for the students to understand that there are more reasons to live than to die. The idea was to read a daily devotional at the beginning of the class, giving them one reason to live every day for the whole school year. I must confess that I only wrote 20 devotionals, writing is really a tough task! So what I had written on my vacations only lasted for a month!

So I assigned my students to write a devotional. They had to find a reason why a person must live and write about it. The writing challenge had begun.

This writing assignment wasn’t easy. The English level of most of my students were from A (beginners) to B2 (Upper Intermediate), according to CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). None of my students were in C1 or C2, the advanced levels. But in spite of everything, they did a pretty good job. The assignment was due in December. So during the next four months I received more than a hundred devotionals written by my 7th, 8th, and 9th grade students. The devotionals written by them were read every school day at the beginning of each class by the teacher or some volunteer students.

They didn’t only listen to the daily devotional, but they had to write the daily verse on their notebooks, write three short sentences about the reason to live of the day, and talk about the meditation. Then I asked them to read aloud what they had written. It took about 10-15 minutes of the class period to cover this activity. The good thing was that by doing this activity I covered listening, writing, reading and speaking in my English as a Foreign Language classes!

This writing and talking experience gave me such satisfaction both spiritual and academic that I want to do it again with my new students this school year.

Keep an eye on this blog for Part 4 of this 13 Reasons Why or 200 Reasons to Live series!

Daily Devotional “200 Reasons to Live”https://mrgirart.wixsite.com/teachingstrategies/200-reasons-a-teen-s-devotional

Author

Javier Girarte

Javier Girarte Guillén loves to interact with teenagers, he has been an ESL teacher, (elementary, middle school, and high school) for more than twenty years. His other passions, besides family, are teaching, writing, and tell stories to his teens children Itza Victoria and Javier Antonio. He is married to Hilda Valencia. He also has published a devotional book for teachers (ACES) and some articles about education (JAE). He is the author of the 2022 teen devotional "113 Reasons Why LIfe is Good" for the North American Division. He lives in Montemorelos, Mexico.

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