I really came about my action plan when I had to put myself in the shoes of \u201cmy user\u201d aka my students. What was particularly helpful was thinking about \u201cwhat they might say?\u201d and \u201chow they feel?\u201d My statements looked like this :<\/span> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n How can I make my classroom a place they truly love to be in and ease some of the pressure they feel each day, whether from home, from teachers, from peers, etc?<\/span><\/p>\n There are a number of different ways I am choosing to attack this goal:<\/span><\/p>\n 1.Practicing Mindfulness (Grade 9 and 11)<\/span><\/p>\n I have heard many a time how important it is to practice mindfulness in my own life. Why don\u2019t I apply this in the classroom? Making time for students to be in the moment, reflect, and breathe. This is taking some research and is truly a process of trial and error. What I am learning so far is the more I do it, the better students are at it. Thus, I am making it part of their daily routine. I am also trying a variety of ways and encouraging them to try different things at home. <\/span><\/p>\n 2. Listen more. (Grade 7,9, and 11)<\/span><\/p>\n I have always believed I have done a good job at this. But, of course, there is always room for improvement. <\/span><\/p>\n So far, I have tried two new things to allow students to have more of a voice in situation where they may hide. In my classroom, we created a \u201cWorry Wall\u201d. We are working on our big essay right now and prior to starting it, \u00a0I decided to give them unlimited sticky notes to voice what they are worried about when it comes to writing an essay. I was shocked to see how honest they were and how m <\/p>\n I have also started using Padlet more regularly in my practice to allow for anonymous question asking during a lesson. The goal is to allow students to ask questions that they may believe are \u201cdumb\u201d questions and too afraid to ask. <\/span><\/p>\n 3. Discovery Day (Grade 9)<\/span><\/p>\n These are days I am planning to use for students to work in general skill development, allowing them to improve on an area of learning which they might like to improve or something they would like to learn more about. My goal is for these to be very open ended. <\/span><\/p>\n 4. Passion Project (Grade 7)<\/span><\/p>\n With the support from faculty and admin, we will be starting a passion project with all grade 7 students in February. The goal is for students to explore a passion of theirs in more depth and\/or have an opportunity to learn about something they are interested in but don\u2019t typically have the chance to learn in your standard classroom setting. This is still in the development phase, but I promise I will have lots to share once we get started. <\/span><\/p>\n To help with all of this, I hope to shadow a student for a day next month to continue to develop my ideas and practice further, really get a feel and take it all in. <\/span><\/p>\n Wow\u2026 that was a mouthful. I\u2019m full of ideas and quite excited about what I have started. All of this to say, I am curious and optimistic about what is to come the rest of the year as I commit to these goals and practices in my classroom. Feedback will play a key role in this. I have been open and honest with my students, sharing my blog, thoughts and ideas with them, in hopes they will share theirs right back! <\/span><\/p>\n I guess we will see!<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So here it is. After many days of thought, reflection, some tears and smiles, here is what I have come up with: HOW MIGHT WE\u2026 inspire creativity and develop a classroom culture centered on a love of learning rather than one which is mark-driven? I really came about my action plan when I had to … Continue reading “Grade 9’s and Mindfulness: Challenge Accepted”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-plan","category-classroom-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/194"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/andrealeacock\/files\/2017\/12\/IMG_1023-1.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>uch they enjoyed the activity. These were placed on the wall and we kept them there as a reminder that \u201cyou are not alone in your worries\u201d and \u201cwe are going to work through all of this together\u201d. They actually decided they wanted to keep it up for the year as a place to voice their worries and a visual to help them through it, a decision that was completely driven by grade 9 students. How cool, right?<\/span><\/p>\n