Reflection On Mindfulness

For my Mindfulness week I plan on focusing on improving student attention and focus. I teach high school level special education: subject areas-biology and chemistry. Most of my students have great difficulty with self-control and self –regulation. There is no shortage of ADD or ADHD in my classes! It is of great importance to me to mindfulness strategies to help my students learn to overcome or control their impulses; whether they are physical or verbal. Next year our school is moving to the NGSS standards for science and most of the curriculum revolves around guided inquiry, productive struggle, problem solving, real world issues etc… I’m extremely concerned about my student’s capabilities with these types of activities. With the exception of a few students, sustaining any kind of attention or focus is practically nonexistent in some of my classes. So it’s become a high priority for me to learn strategies that I can use with implementation of NGSS. Intended learning outcomes for students will be improved focus, attention to tasks, improvement in grasping directions and instructions and improved overall behavior and effort.

Objectives include:

1.

Doing so would give me a better idea of what to expect as well as identify any potential problems. In any event, since mindfulness is new to me as well, the more practice I have with it the better I can guide my students through it. Preparing my students for it is a different story. My idea is to open up a discussion about it first, just to get the kids thinking about the concept and opening them up to the idea of trying it. And then, conducting a short activity as a test run, possibly without the kids even knowing it. For instance; a short pre-test stress reduction activity. Then if the response is good, and they noticed a difference or liked the impact it made they’ll be more motivated to