Unit 4: How can you implement mindfulness into your classroom?
OVERVIEW OF MINDFULNESS
Return to: ETAP 623 Spring 2020 (Zhang) | Mindfulness in the Elementary Classroom | Unit 1: What is Mindfulness? | Unit 2: Combating Chronic Stress with mindfulness | Unit 3: Different Types of Mindfulness Practices
An Overview of this Unit
By completing this unit you will meet the following objectives:
1:Define mindfulness and self-regulation
2:Explain the importance of mindfulness practice
3:Identify and implement different mindfulness practices in their classroom
4:Improve students self-regulation skills and decrease stress levels
Bite-Sized Mindfulness
Many teachers feel overwhelmed and short on time in their classrooms already. Some of you may be thinking, you don't have time in your busy day to add in mindfulness activities. However, Mindfulness exercises don't have to take long. If you take five minutes of instruction time and dedicate it to mindfulness you can have more engaged students during your instruction. Watch this ted talk by Kira Willey on how you can incorporate "Bite-Sized" mindfulness into your day.
Mindfulness in The Early Grades
The sooner we can teach children mindfulness the better. In early grades, we can do this by incorporating bite-sized mindfulness into our daily routines. We can create a mindfulness spot in our classroom where students can go when they need to calm down or destress. Lastly, getting parents on board and keeping communication open with them is imperative. If parents are taught about mindfulness and its techniques they can help implement it at home with their children as well. Watch this video by Erickson News on how a school in Chicago has incorporated mindfulness into their building.
Summary
Throughout this mini-course, you have learned what mindfulness is. You have read about the harmful effects of chronic stress on the brain, and you have analyzed data on how many children are suffering from anxiety, depression, stress, and mental illness. You practiced some mindfulness exercise's yourself and got to feel the benefits first-hand. With the resources available it's up to you to think about what mindfulness exercises will implement to best meet the needs of your students?
Post-Assessment
Please share your final thoughts on how you can get your students and their parents on board with mindfulness practices on our collaboration nearpod. After completing the entire mini-course, please take this short post-assessment on SurveyMonkey.
Click here to open our Collaboration Nearpod use the code WXPVS to join the discussion board as a student.