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Encouraging learners to feel more confident in the classroom is a problem often faced by teachers. Below are five simple things you can adopt in your classroom to encourage learners to feel self-confident.

The small things

Let’s start with the physical comfort of our students. Having the room adequately heated or cooled, asking if they would like the window open, making sure everyone has had some water or checking to see if anyone needs to go to the bathroom or wash their hands only takes a minute at the beginning of the lesson. It helps our children to know that their welfare is our concern.

Then, make sure that everyone has their books and praise them for being organized or having their pencils sharpened and ready. These things seem trivial, but they count. They count because we are acknowledging the fact that it isn’t always easy to get up and ready for school every morning, day after day and that just managing that well is an achievement.

So, starting by checking the small things helps to give our students a feeling of well-being before the lesson has even begun.

Clarity and familiarity

Be clear. Be clear about what you are all going to do and why you are going to do it. There is no such thing as ‘the obvious’ when it comes to learning. For example, you know that English is spoken internationally, but primary-aged students may have no concept of what ‘internationally’ means.

They may never have considered the concept of language itself. So, we must state the ‘obvious’ and do it in ways which are meaningful to the children, through videos, pictures and relatable examples. This goes for everything; what a verb is, how we form negative statements, what question marks indicate and what today’s lesson aims are.

Whatever they need to know, we need to state it clearly and when they have forgotten, we tell them again without ever making them feel that they ‘should’ have remembered. They forget – we remind. That’s our job.

Then there is the familiarity of a routine. Apart from making us feel reassured that we know what is happening, routines also feed into the innate need for repetition. Young children want their favorite bedtime stories told to them exactly the same way each night and will pop their heads up to correct us if we do something differently. That repetition is part of practice; doing, saying or hearing something repeatedly until we are completely sure we know it.

Most teachers don’t need reminding of this, but it might be helpful to remember that within that routine, one can also have surprises.

A five-minute ‘something different’ slot could be built into your routine. This could be a fun quiz, game or song and dance. A straightforward way of managing this is to write the names of different ‘surprise activities’ on pieces of card, put them into a pot and let a different student pick a card each day.

Room to maneuver

We all feel more confident if we know that we are free to experiment and, within that experimentation, to make mistakes. It can’t be stated often enough that we will only ever learn something by doing it wrong, often many times, before we do it right.

This message may be even more important nowadays when we see and hear perfect versions of whatever has been created - music, cookery and writing to name but a few - especially on social media.

The learning process is not brought to our attention as often as the result, and the results are often digitally altered to look more impressive. We need to remind our children of this and make them feel good about their efforts, however small and halting.

Peer pressure often contributes to a lack of self-confidence; you only need one mocking ‘friend’ to put you off. So, we must be vigilant in noticing little glances or whispered asides and praise the majority of the students who are quietly accepting or encouraging.

Space to flourish

Finally, confidence in our language learning abilities will soar when we know we can make the language our own and use it however we want.

This goes beyond personalizing activities, which can be done at any level ("What’s your favorite food?" "Do you like tomatoes?") and is dependent on the teacher noticing and accepting what individual children are really interested in. So, for example, if we continue with the example of food, a sporty child might be interested in what famous sports people have for breakfast or which foods give us stamina.

A child who is interested in nature might want to know what birds and animals eat. For this to happen, first we need to notice their interests, show enthusiasm for what they are finding out and encourage them to share what they have learnt with the class.

The 23rd of April marks the birth (and death) of William Shakespeare: poet, playwright and pre-eminent dramatist. His poems and plays have been translated into 80 languages, even Esperanto and Klingon.

It is remarkable how Shakespeare’s iconic body of work has withstood the test of time. More than four centuries on, his reflections on the human condition have lost none of their relevance. Contemporary artists and writers continue to draw on his language, imagery and drama for inspiration.

But, despite the breadth and longevity of his appeal, getting students excited about Shakespeare is not always straightforward. The language is challenging, the characters may be unfamiliar and the plots can seem far removed from modern life.

However, with the right methods and resources, there is plenty for teenagers and young adults to engage with. After all, love, desperation, jealousy and anger are feelings we can all relate to, regardless of the age group, culture or century we belong to!
So, how can you bring classic Shakespearean dramas like Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth to life?

There are many ways for your learners to connect with Shakespeare and get excited by his works. Here we’ll show you three classroom activities to do with your students and some indispensable resources to ensure that reading Shakespeare is as accessible and enjoyable as possible!

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What is mindfulness?

The term mindfulness refers to a state of awareness. This is arrived at by paying conscious attention to the present moment and observing it without judgment, with curiosity and compassion.

It is often confused with meditation, but really they’re not the same thing at all. Meditating and focusing on the breath is just one of the ways we can consciously pay attention and become more aware of ourselves and the present moment.Ìý

You might be conscious that mindfulness has over the last decade. As with anything trendy, it can be easy to build preconceptions and dismiss it before trying it yourself. So let’s break it down together and start with the basics.

Why is mindfulness important?

Have you ever been driving somewhere in the car and noticed that you’ve arrived at your destination without really noticing the journey at all? All your thoughts on the way were elsewhere.

This is called being on automatic pilot. It’s a symptom of our mind and body’s brilliant way of turning our everyday processes into a routine. It means we don’t need to think about it every time we need our body to move, speak or function.

Just as the scenery can pass us by on a journey, so too can our thoughts and reactions to the things happening around us. They happen in our minds and bodies without us noticing. Our conscious mind is focused on something in the future, the past, or in our imaginations instead.

Being on automatic pilot is often very helpful. But it also comes with a significant downside. Without us even realizing, negative thought cycles can build up under the surface. They can make us feel stressed and anxious.

When this happens our minds conclude that there is a threat and sounds the alarm. This stress , ability to process new information, and ability to learn.

This is where mindfulness comes in.

Mindfulness helps us catch these in their tracks, allowing us to consciously notice negative thoughts. Rather than panicking, we become aware of how we are feeling – and why. We can therefore shift our relationship with our thoughts and emotions so that they don’t seem so challenging anymore.

In a school setting, this can help students regulate the stress surrounding exam pressure. Students can also learn to sit more comfortably with the impermanent emotions of adolescence, which seemed all-consuming and everlasting at the time.

What can our students learn from mindfulness?

Over the past decade, neuroscientific research has discovered that our brains are immensely malleable. Every interaction we have in our day-to-day lives builds connections that affect how our brains and thoughts function. Just like building muscle through exercise, our brain forms new matter in the areas we use most.

In short, we can either continue to cement the habits we’ve already formed or build brain matter in areas that encourage healthier, more positive functioning.

Studies have demonstrated in many contexts that the brains of those who regularly practice mindfulness use different pathways to those who don’t: pathways which allow self-regulation of adrenaline and the stress responses and make it easier to experience external events without the accompanying narrative of critical thought.

Even ten minutes of practicing mindful awareness a day has been . Mindfulness has also been shown to improve concentration and focus, resilience, emotional regulation and sleep quality in children, teens and adults alike.

How can we begin to practice mindfulness?

We start by learning to focus attention on a physical anchor. This may be focusing on the body, the breath, or even using the senses to observe sounds, sights, tastes, touch etc. in our external environment. We then build the length of time we can focus, and grow accustomed to the mind wandering and returning to the point of focus.

Then we learn to be curious about what we notice in the present moment and that we can observe without judging or forming an opinion.

In time, it can be possible to learn to observe our relationship with the thoughts that come in and out of our minds. We can then find ways to accept difficult feelings and allow them to pass over without panicking or instinctively reacting.

Want to learn more about mindfulness and wellbeing? Check out our blog posts on the subject here.Ìý