Mindfulness- Bringing Calm to your Day
Mindfulness is one of the best ways to combat stress and anxiety. While mindfulness and meditation are no longer reserved for Buddhist retreats, you might still be unsure about how to integrate this practice into your life. Meditation can be broadly defined as any activity that involves controlling your attention. Mindfulness is about focusing on whatever is happening moment-by-moment without being judgmental. In mindfulness meditation, you actively choose to control where your mind goes. For example, you can choose to pay attention to your breath or the sounds around you. While that seems fairly simple, you’ll quickly discover that your attention easily wanders. Developing the ability to regulate our attention ultimately helps you to live more in the present moment…
Engaging Students In Learning Activities
Students who are genuinely engaged in their learning are easier to manage and achieve more. It is helpful to reflect on the following key elements in planning learning activities that engage our students. Make It Meaningful It is essential that students perceive activities as being meaningful. Research has shown that if students do not consider a learning activity worthy of their time and effort, they might not engage in a satisfactory way or may even disengage entirely. (Fredricks, Blumenfeld, & Paris, 2004). Connecting the activity with students’ previous knowledge and experiences is one way of trying to make learning experiences meaningful. Asking great questions that stimulate and challenge students is another great strategy. For each unit try to identify an…
Using MS Autocorrect to Save Time
So much of the everyday tasks in schools today revolve around Microsoft Word. From reports, to letters to parents, to minutes of meetings….. What if you could fast track some of the common pieces of data you enter? If you can save yourself a few minutes here and there it all adds up! Saving 5 minutes each day works out to be almost ½ an hour each week. Multiply that by the school term of approximately 10 weeks and that’s 5 hours you could get back. So “How can I get Word to do the work for me” do I hear you ask? You just need to “train” it and unlike a new staff member, some of the hard work…
Overcoming FoMO and the Hurry Bug
FoMO and the Hurry Bug are by-products of technology, connectivity and a fast-paced life. FoMO or the Fear Of Missing Out is the pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent. It is driven by our most basic desire to feel connected and have a sense of belonging. FoMO is often evident in a desire to stay continually connected through social media with what others are doing. We are flooded with digital stimuli. The prevalence of social media allows us to instantly connect with others and ‘share’ in their experience. However the tendency to selectively post the best aspects of our lives can contribute to a competitive environment and ‘one upmanship’. This contributes to…
Assuming Positive Intent
Covey in, “The Speed of Trust” says that we judge ourselves according to our intentions but we judge other people according to their behaviour and make assumptions about their intentions. The assumptions that we make impact on whether we trust them. Assuming positive intent means consciously choosing to assume that our colleagues are operating to the best of their ability and are acting with the best interest of the school and their colleagues in mind. The principle of positive intention is that at some level all behaviour is (or at one time was) “positively intended”. Another way to view it is that all behaviour serves (or at one time served) a “positive purpose”. We should therefore look for the positive…
Successful Parent – Teacher Conferences
Successful parent – teacher conferences are important in establishing good relationships with parents. Well planned and conducted parent – teacher conferences establish a solid foundation for a partnership that is in the student’s best interests and prevent further problems developing. Preparation is vital for effective meetings with parents. Parent – Teacher Conferences are ‘Moments of Truth’ for parents. They are important times where parents come into direct contact with us and form an impression of our school. Be prepared – ensure that you have notes about the key areas you want to discuss and the key messages that you want the parent to understand. As well as discussing progress and achievement in academic areas it is important to consider pertinent…
Reducing classroom stress with explicit teaching
There is no doubt that many classroom behavioural issues result from baggage which some students bring to school but certain issues arise as a result of uninspiring lessons which bear little or no relevance to students’ lives. The saying that, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” is well known. Another saying is, “Ownership leads to motivation”. If we were to use the framework of Bloom’s taxonomy of the cognitive domain, we notice that when we are asking students to remember, explain and apply information we have previously taught them, they have little ownership of that information since the teacher ‘owned it’ in the first place. However, as soon as the teacher asks students to discuss, examine, debate…
Back to Basics Behaviour Management, By Brendan Zischke
We have all had that one class we dread going to. In my experience with difficult classes I have found that the way a class behaves seems to “snowball”. It either becomes better or worse, depending on how you behave. Obviously the earlier you correct behaviour the better however, the tips below are aimed to improve classroom behaviour despite its current level. 1: Always use a students’ first name. This will improve your rapport with them as individuals. The two most pleasing sounds to the human ear will not surprise you. They are the musical key of C (found in poker machines) and your name! 2: Use Thank you verses Please. An instruction such as, “Take out your books please,”…
Making 2016 Your Best Year Yet… As a Teacher
Wherever possible we try to provide useful information for all staff who work in schools, not just the teaching staff. We acknowledge that staff in other roles within the school make a huge difference and are important to the success of schools. However some areas are particularly relevant to teaching staff. This week’s Happy School article is specifically written for teachers. Starting a new school year is an important time to reflect on what is working and what aspects of your teaching ‘could be even better’. What are your key priorities for refining your teaching practices in 2016? The following suggestions are intended to prompt reflection. Keep it simple – a max. of 3! Deeper technology – add one area…
Set Up to Win
While we all know students work better in a secure, structured, safe and supportive environment, how do we set students up to win? How do we make the boundaries clear and support students to learn when they don’t stay within those boundaries? Building a strong foundation for learning by making expectations about behaviour and work standards explicit to students from the beginning saves time, energy and stress, increasing productivity in the longer term. We all need to know the rules of the game before we can win! Off task, disruptive behaviour of students can be one of the biggest stressors for teachers. Having consistent, clear expectations reduces uncertainty and anxiety for students and teachers increasing opportunities for success. Encourage a…
5 Tips for Helping Students Stressed by Tests- by Eva-Maria
Nineteen year old best-selling author of the book ‘You Shut Up!’, international speaker and certified coach Eva-Maria is living her dream: she is on a mission to help improve 10 000 000 relationships between adults and teenagers around the world. Here Eva shares her tips for teachers from a teenager’s perspective. 1. Acknowledge that exams are stressful When I was studying for exams, as I’m sure many teens can relate to, I thought the teachers were out to get me and wanted to push me to watch my brain start oozing out of my head. Reassure them that you’re really on their side. You are there to support and encourage them to achieve their potential. You want them to achieve…
Thriving in the Challenge of Change
Emotional resilience – is it just another trendy fad, designed to sell books and amuse uni students, or is there something tangible to it that we can learn from, adopt and develop ourselves to be more optimistic? I’m in the happy camp here in that I prefer to lean to the latter statement. Emotional resilience comes from the field of Positive Psychology – the study of strengths, virtues and what goes right. Following World War II, psychology took the route of focusing on what goes wrong, on mental illness and pathology. It wasn’t until the start of the new millennium that pioneers like Martin Seligman brought credibility and validated research to the study of happiness. Are you one of those…