Hi everyone! My name is Catherine, and I am the summer intern for The Ability Challenge. One of the topics I focused on this summer is mindfulness and how it can be used in a classroom of diverse learners. While mindfulness may seem like a buzzword these days, it is a critical piece to creating inclusive learning environments for both students and educators.
Throughout my research, it became clear that even a few moments dedicated to mindfulness a day can help students calm their minds and be more engaged and active for the rest of the day.
As a student at Cornell University studying Education, my classmates and I worked to create a lesson plan for students based on mindfulness.
It only takes a few minutes, and to make it easy to get started, here’s a quick lesson plan to help kickstart your mindful classroom.
This lesson plan was designed for either in-person or remote learning, modified for all types of learners, and centers around an accessible topic: our five senses. The goals and objectives as outlined in the lesson plan are to help students gain the skills and knowledge to practice mindfulness on their own and feel more prepared to handle their varied emotions. Using our senses helps bring awareness to the given moment and can help relax our whole body when feeling overwhelmed. This is extremely beneficial for students, especially those with diverse learning needs because it helps settle them into the classroom, manage transitions, and ease into learning (which may be especially hard this year for students who were away from physical classrooms because of the pandemic).
This lesson plan combines more formal meditation using your five senses and a fun interactive “I Spy” activity to get the whole class involved. The written lesson plan is also accompanied by a digital presentation that can be projected in-person or screen shared for remote learning.
I hope this lesson plan helps you practice mindfulness and instill strong habits in all of our students!
