What does it mean to practice mindfulness in the classroom?
Image from: https://www.headspace.com/meditation/quotes
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In this section you will find some ideas for implementation of mindfulness in the classroom. I will provide a general overview of how this practice may look/sound/feel, but it is important to note that mindfulness is just like instruction & assessment:
ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mindfulness practices will look different in each classroom, and differ depending on the group of students you have as well. This is the case, even if you were to follow a mindful curriculum like MindUp; although the basics are similar, the actual implementation is dependent on what works for your unique classroom. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Below, you will find an outline of what worked well for me during my PIP and some of the ways I used mindfulness in my PS3 classroom. You will also find some other useful links and articles to help you see the breadth of strategies. Click the button below to be directed to the resources page for more! |
Mindfulness in Miss. Hoisington's Classroom
One of the biggest takeaways from this project for me was that mindfulness practices must be a purposeful and intentional part of your classroom routine. You can introduce mindful moments or calming strategies into your day, but I found that if it is not done in such a way that allows students to understand why we do it or the benefits of such, it is hard to see long-term positive impacts.
In addition to this, after creating a strong routine of mindfulness, I found that students began to expect these breaks and if something happened where we had to miss one or shift things around I could sense the difference in the room!
In addition to this, after creating a strong routine of mindfulness, I found that students began to expect these breaks and if something happened where we had to miss one or shift things around I could sense the difference in the room!
Here, I have included a basic schedule of our mornings, and highlighted the mindful moments we engage with daily in PURPLE.
First you will notice calming/focus music for a soft start:
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- These tend to get students ramped up and elevated, so I found it was necessary to implement a calming body break as well. I curated a GoogleSite with various body and brain breaks to help us ground ourselves and get ready for our learning jobs. These included some videos from Cosmic Kids Yoga, GoNoodle Calm, GoNoodle Flow, and various other youtube channels that walk us through various calm activity based movement breaks, and other brain breaks to focus on breath and visualization.
- After snack, students had the opportunity to engage in some play with smaller "window" centres. This often resulted in lots of excitement, and it took us some time to come back from that high energy and get ready to learn. Our school offered a trial of CalmConnect, by PrioHealth and I decided to give it a try for the class and this was really successful for our students. They have a library of videos with calming music, and purposeful movements with their arms. These movement breaks helped us to transition from the craziness of centres, back to a mindset where we could do our learning jobs!
- I was also able to incorporate more mindful vocabulary in these moments as we did a body scan before our movement break, and identified how our bodies felt after centres- many students were able to use words to describe their bodies and brains with phrases like "I am feeling kind of crazy," "I feel too excited," or even "I feel distracted." After we did the calming body break, we did another body scan to see how our minds, arms, tummy, legs, and whole bodies felt now; students used phrases like "I am feeling calm," "I feel peaceful," "I feel ready to learn," or even "I still feel a little bit crazy" (in these moments we would do some extra breathing and reinforce the fact that it is okay if our bodies are not feeling calm right away- it takes practice!)
- This was something I implemented a bit later on- at the end of the day before we started cleaning up big centres, I would play a song for the kids! This was usually more of a "fun" song- some of our class favourites are "Can't Stop the Feeling" by Justin Timberlake, "What Makes you Beautiful" by One Direction, "Better when I'm Dancin'" by Meghan Trainor, "Shake it Off" by Taylor Swift, and "ABC" by the Jackson 5!
- Students had to keep their voices off and calmly tidy up and get dressed for home- once they were dressed for home they could dance it out at their tables while we waited for everyone to get ready! This cut down on the amount of "crazy" that happened at the end of the day- some days we had so much fun we even listened to a second song... they loved this!!
This is the page we use from Breathe Like a Bear.
Click the button below to view the book! |
This is a screenshot of the GoogleSite I created.
Click the button below to view it! |
This is what the CalmConnect page looks like- it has various sections for different movement breaks.
Click the button below to view the PrioHealth page. |
Results of Project/Implementation
Positive Behaviour SupportMindfulness helped me to provide positive behaviour support for my students who struggled with regulation. In moments of dysregulation, we simply stopped and took some breathes, while we used the language of mindfulness that we had previously learned- like staying calm or taking a moment to reconnect/ground.
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"Can't we please do another one?"The kids began looking forward to our mindfulness breaks- they loved having these built into our routine so they expected it!
If something happened in the day and we missed one of our mindfulness routines, the students would ask for them! They especially loved the CalmConnect after snack. |
High Levels of EngagementStudents were really wiggly at first, and had a hard time focusing or taking mindfulness seriously, but as we progressed they began to show higher levels of engagement and buy-in. They started to see the differences in themselves and it worked really well to help them calm.
They began to take it seriously and engage in all activities! |
A quick note on limitations of the project: By the time we figured out a solid routine that worked for my students, we were only able to do this for about 8 weeks. Within that time I did notice great changes for my students (mentioned above), but I am sure if this was done for a full year, and built into the routine from the very beginning you would be able to see more of the benefits on SEL and self regulation- the changes in their brains!
What other things could you try?
As I mentioned above, mindful practices need to be catered to your unique group of students- this will look different depending on their context, the age of students and the type of class you have (are you with them all day? or, do you only teach them for a single block?)
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I have included a few different links for your viewing below- these include some great resources, tips and additional considerations for implementation. These webpages also reflect different classroom contexts and give a variety of ideas!
I hope you can find something here that is helpful for your classroom.
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I have included a few different links for your viewing below- these include some great resources, tips and additional considerations for implementation. These webpages also reflect different classroom contexts and give a variety of ideas!
I hope you can find something here that is helpful for your classroom.
Now, who does not like a good TED Talk?
Please see below for a couple of my favourite mindfulness TED Talks I found during my research!
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