Organize your mind

Time

2-5 minutes

Level

Primary / Junior / Intermediate

Material

Relaxation app, music (optional)

Purpose

To help students dedicate time to build their skills to organize their thoughts and to promote calmness

Instructions

Provide one to two minutes to allow students to set a personal goal for the upcoming lesson/task/test (students can write down their goal if they wish).

Then, to help students calm their minds and get ready for a lesson/task/test, ask them to:

Sit comfortably and to either lower their gaze or close their eyes.
Be aware of their breath and the oxygen it brings their body, and to visualize God’s love entering their body and the release of stress or negative thoughts as they breathe out.
Breathe in for four counts and out for six counts for about two minutes.
Invite students to return their awareness to their fingers and toes, then to their shoulders as they roll them, and finally to open their eyes.
Remind students as they become aware of thoughts, to simply acknowledge these, and continue breathing.

Mindfulness education in schools has been increasingly supported based on the evidence linking it with an increase in optimism, social competence and self-concept for students (Schonert-Reichl & Lawlor, 2010). The benefits of social-emotional learning programs, taught in school, seem to also be increased through adding a mindfulness component. Students who received teaching in both social-emotional skills and mindfulness showed significant improvements in well-being, and prosocial behaviors (Schonert-Reichl, et al., 2015). Teacher reports indicate that integrating mindfulness programming into the classroom is both easy and beneficial, making this a practical and manageable addition to classroom tools for supporting the mental health of everyone in the classroom.

References

Schonert-Reichl, K. A., & Lawlor, M. S. (2010). The effects of a mindfulness-based education program on pre-and early adolescents’ well-being and social and emotional competence. Mindfulness, 1(3), 137-151.

Schonert-Reichl, K. A., Oberle, E., Lawlor, M. S., Abbott, D., Thomson, K., Oberlander, T. F., & Diamond, A. (2015). Enhancing cognitive and social-emotional development through a simple-to-administer mindfulness-based school program for elementary school children: A randomized controlled trial. Developmental psychology, 51(1), 52.