Meditate your way to English
What is MEDITATION? It’s a technique where we focus on our breath, sound or a mantra. Meditating has a lot of benefits.
A long time ago I realised that empowering my students is my mission. I use various resources to achieve this- inspirational stories, videos, poems, songs, to name but a few.
Nevertheless, I noticed that more and more students
would come to me and say:
I don’t believe in myself.
I feel anxious.
I’m struggling to manage my
feelings.
I can’t calm my mind.
I am not confident enough.
Or parents would say:
Can you help my child focus
better?
Does it sound familiar?
So twelve months ago I decided to introduce
MEDITATIONS to my students- a powerful mindfulness tool that I have been using
in my life for a few years. I believe that I owed my personal growth and
enhanced creativity to meditating so I knew I was onto a winner.
What is MEDITATION?
It’s a technique where we focus on our breath,
sound or a mantra.
Meditating has a lot of benefits. And while
many people use this mindfulness tool to improve their health and relax their
mind and body, we, educators, can boldly introduce it to our students because
it:
-stimulates the imaginative
aspects of the brain;
-encourages critical thinking
-enables us to reflect on our
thoughts
-helps us to learn how to
manage our emotions (great as a pre-writing activity)
-we become more self-aware
But how can we, English
teachers, embrace this powerful mindfulness activity?
1) At the beginning of a lesson to calm our
students, especially after they've had a PE lesson :)
It helps the students feel more present in the
classroom.
2) Before a reading activity to help the
learners focus better. My students often complain that they're struggling to
calm their mind while reading. So I tend to play a short meditation before the start
of the task. I've seen the calming effect of meditating and highly recommend
it.
3) Before a writing activity
I usually play a short meditation and then
give a writing prompt which could be:
-a poem
-an extract from a book
-a question with 6 words for
the students to use if they want to
-a sentence/paragraph from a
story we've read in class
Then I ask the students to write one of the
following:
a
poem/ a short story/ a diary entry/ an essay/ a letter
Or if they are kids, they can draw something.
I also give them a time limit, which is
usually 10 min.
Of course, please, bear in mind that the
prompt has to be appropriate for your students' age and level.
I firmly believe that it is in this moment of
stillness, when we are able to connect with our inner power and creativity.
I've seen students, who are not strong writers, create some amazing pieces.
During my workshop EMPOWERING STUDENTS which I
ran this August at EdYOUfest in Street, England, I demonstrated this technique
to the teachers and their response was overwhelming. Not only did they write
some great stories and poems but the prompt also brought lots of memories and
they were not afraid to show the tears in their eyes.
I told you that this mindfulness tool could be
powerful, didn't I?
So here's the mediation activity that I did
during my workshop. It is suitable for older teenagers and adults.
1. I played a short breathing mediation. Link here
2. Then I gave the following writing prompt
I would like you to go back to
your school years and remember a time when you felt seen/acknowledged by a
teacher. How did it make you feel? What did the teacher do? What sounds and
smells does this memory bring to you?
3. Here are six words that I dictated so that
they could use them if they wanted to:
simultaneously,
accepted, presence, beyond, deep, judgement
4. I gave them ten minutes to write and as I
mentioned before the results were incredible.
Have you got any experience using meditations with your
students?