Student Contributor: J. MacPherson
This tool is a great way to have kiddos begin their day feeling refreshed and ready. One minute in the morning is all it takes to get your students in a healthy mindset.
This tool is to be implemented every morning after students have eaten their breakfast and began their morning task. The teacher simply tells the class it is time for their mindful minute, and begins by ringing the chime. As the mindful minute begins, the teacher will direct students to take a deep breathe in and out. In a calm tone the teacher will direct students to consider how they are going to show kindness that day and keep a healthy mindset. Mindful minute is meant to relax students before they begin their day and create a healthy mindset.
This tool fits best in the preventative stage because it is implemented in the morning before the students begin their day. The preventative stage occurs before lessons which is why this tool fits best with the preventative phase. This tool fits into the teacher directed/collaborative phase best because it is the teacher that implements this tool every morning. However, the students work collaboratively to be mindful of one another throughout the day, making sure to consider their choices. Often times after mindful minute, students are asked to share with a neighbor how they can show kindness to one another throughout the day. It is their reps0onsibility to consider the feelings of others and make good choices throughout the day.
More Information –
Tool Source: The idea for this tool came from my mentor, D. Paulson, in her 4th grade classroom.
In my 4th grade classroom, we have 22 students. Our Elementary School is located in an urban area. This tool was something that I was excited to implement into my classroom. On Mondays, the students come into the class with the resulting feelings from their weekend. Their weekend can range from amazing to the worst days of their lives. Coming in on Mondays, my students know that they get to have a mindful minute where they can breath and restart their week. This is something that greatly impacted our class and effected how well our day ended. At first my students were dreading the mindful minute until they tried it and started to enjoy a minute of doing nothing. My students now look forward to this time where they can process their emotions and take a break from the expectations they face from home and school. Some tips I would encourage for this tool would be, setting clear directions for what the students are allowed to do during this minute and debriefing about that minute once it is over for students to reflect.
This tool was something that we had already been incorporating in our classroom. Regardless I still like using this tool and find it to be effective for most students. Always seemed to have a couple students that did not like to participate at first, but when students are given mindfulness activities that they enjoy it is very effective. We always used it after lunch after the kids had been outside and had just eaten. They seemed to be most energized at this point. Something that helped us make this tool more effective was having a few options for videos and allowing the students to choose from a couple videos. Students always seem to enjoy having choices, so they are not forced into anything and it seems to help them calm down and re-focus. I think this is a fantastic preventative tool to use at all elementary and middle school ages. I plan on using this tool in my own classroom someday and maybe I will try using it first thing in the morning and compare it with using it in the afternoon time.
Implemented in urban school, 5th grade class of 26 students. This tool is extremely easy to prepare for and teach because all the preparation you need is to come up with a call and response, or multiple ideas so the kids can choose. And the students really enjoyed this, even though they are 5th graders they still love to be goofy. My students enjoyed this even more because after I had been using the call and response for a while and the expectations were known I started letting students come up with their own call and response that they wanted the class to use which made them even more excited to use the call and response and it ended up working more effectively. I would recommend going over the expectations of the call and response and the purpose after a long weekend or space of time when you haven’t used it frequently to remind the students of the purpose.
In my kindergarten classroom we have a class of 16 students and the Elementary school is located in an urban area. This preventative tool was something I was looking forward to doing with the class as they love this sort of thing and react well to it. In kindergarten I have noticed that the students have a high range of emotions, so coming in with this activity in the beginning of the day I have felt helps set the mood and feelings for the day. The students have a strong schedule in the mornings, so once we got this into the routine, they would know the time was coming for it and would be excited for the activity, so the students are constantly asking around the time we that we do it if it is time to start. That is one thing I would change going forward because it seems to be distracting them, I would want a distinct attention getter that I would only use for Mindful Minute. This way the students know it is time for it and they don’t have to ask about or possibly a timer going.