Building healthy New Year habits with your students

Amy Malloy
Amy Malloy
Students sat outside on grass studying and smiling
Reading time: 3 minutes

Balancing mindfulness and planning ahead

Here we find ourselves already in a new year. I wonder if, like me, many of you might be wondering how that has happened. January is a time of year traditionally associated with analyzing the past and making resolutions for the future.

In the classroom this might also involve looking forward to assessments and exams at the end of the school year. Maybe you’ve made New Year’s resolutions that have already fallen by the wayside.

The focus of this blog is learning how to stay in the present moment. So let's take a practical look at how to manage this time of year with your students and with ourselves as teachers (and humans), while also effectively planning ahead for the future.

Building healthy New Year habits with your students
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1. Mindfulness of daily habits

Mindfulness can be a broader concept than just focusing on the breath. We can also extend awareness to our daily habits and look at what is making us feel good and what is draining us. This helps us ensure our daily routine is actively supporting our mental health.

Here’s what you can do to help your students be more mindful of their daily habits.

  1. Invite your students to make two lists: one list of everything they do every day and another list of things that make them feel happy or relaxed. This can be a nice activity to try in English if you’d like to work on daily routine vocabulary and likes/dislikes.
  2. Ask them to see how many of the activities they named in their happy lists are also on their everyday lists.
  3. Then ask them to see if they can find a time in their schedules to include one of their happy list activities on a regular basis. For example, they could add listening to their favourite song on their way to school to their everyday list.

This activity encourages children to be more understanding of what makes them feel happy or less happy on a daily basis. In this way, we gently teach them to be more aware of their emotions and how to take an active role in supporting their own mental health and self-care. Ultimately, we teach them that the choices we make day-to-day are as important as a resolution for the rest of the year.

As they learn more mindfulness activities in school, these might even start to appear on their everyday lists too. This will protect their minds against everyday stress and assessment pressure.

2. Planting an intention seed

New Year’s resolutions seem to play a large role in society, and it is interesting to notice how guilty we feel if we don’t stick to them.

We traditionally make resolutions at the start of a new year, but this is completely arbitrary - and it hasn’t always been this way. In fact, the concept of setting an intention for the new year dates back to at least 4000BC. Back then, these resolutions were traditionally made in March, . But when Julius Caesar made the Roman calendar, he decided that each year would begin in January.

The Romans felt it was more appropriate because the Roman god Janus represented new beginnings, endings, gateways and transitions. It’s strange to think this ancient decision now affects how we run and organize our lives and our personal energy all over the world.

January is actually a time when nature is still in hibernation, with trees bare and seeds still under the ground (in the Northern Hemisphere, at least). This can make it feel difficult to commit to fresh starts and, for some, feel overwhelming to look ahead.

So instead of resolutions, try inviting your students to simply set an intention of what they’d like to feel or achieve over the course of the year. And rather than pushing for it or expecting it to happen straight away, invite them to treat it like a seed in a pot of soil which they are watering each day with one little step at a time.

This might be a little bit of revision for a test every day, for example, or tidying their room once a week so it feels nice to play and do homework in.

3. Mindful walking

A lovely way to get your students to connect with nature’s calendar is to take them outside for a mindfulness walk. You could link it in with a class plan to introduce nature or town vocabulary, or organize it during lunch or break time for multiple classes together.

  1. Take students outside*. Invite them to stand quietly looking at the ground.
  2. Invite them to notice the contact of their feet with the ground. Tell them to start walking slowly, noticing the movement of each foot as it leaves and then meets the ground again.
  3. Once they are in a gentle walking rhythm, invite them to start looking around them, noticing the world around them. They should keep a gentle focus on the rhythm of their feet moving along the floor.
  4. Once back in the classroom, invite them to spend five minutes writing down or talking about what they noticed on their walk (in English)

*If outside simply isn’t an option for your school, you can try a mindful walk through the corridors.

This can be a really pleasant way to encourage students (and yourself) to notice what is going on around them in nature and to step outside of the timetable set for them as part of the school system. It helps their focus and perspective, reducing stress and reminding them how far they have progressed.

Staying present and planning ahead

I often have mindfulness students asking me how they can stay present while also effectively planning ahead. Hopefully, these three simple ideas demonstrate how we can actively use our focus on the present moment to improve and pace our future planning for exams and deadlines.

By trusting in the process of calmly planting little seeds of intention and taking little steps to grow them, we can achieve just as much, if not more, than thinking six months into the future and panicking that we haven’t yet achieved what we want to have done by then. Good luck.

Read our posts 'tips for student wellbeing at back to school time' and 'Does mindfulness really work? Can it help your students?'.

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    How to improve literacy in the classroom

    By Katharine Scott
    Reading time: 5 minutes

    Katharine Scott is a teacher trainer and educational materials developer with over 20 years’ experience writing English language textbooks. She’s co-author of the app Primary course - English Code and is based in Spain. Katharine outlines a number of practical ways you can help English language learners develop key literacy skills.

    What is literacy?

    Teachers at all stages of education often complain about their students’ reading skills. The students are literate. In other words, they can interpret the graphemes, or letters on the page, into words. But they struggle to identify the purpose of a text or to analyze it in a meaningful way. We could say that the students have poor literacy skills.

    Literacy is a term used to describe an active, critical form of reading. Some of the skills of a critical reader include:

    Checking new information

    A crucial literacy skill involves discerning whether a text is factually true or not. A critical reader always checks new information against existing knowledge. As we read, we have an internal dialogue: Where does that information come from? That’s impossible because ….

    Separating fact from opinion

    This skill is essential for understanding many different types of texts from newspaper articles to scientific research.

    Understanding the purpose of a text

    All pieces of text have a main purpose. This may be entertainment, in the case of a story or persuasion, in the case of advertising. A critical reader will know how to identify the purpose of the text.

    In the classroom, different types of text require different responses from the students. It’s important, as students grow older, that they know how to read and respond appropriately to a piece of written information.

    Identifying key information in a text

    This is an essential skill for summarizing information or following instructions. It is also important when we transform written information into something else, like a chart.

    In many ways, literacy is the key skill that underpins learning at all stages. This may seem like an exaggeration, but consider the importance of the four skills outlined above.

    Strategies to promote literacy

    Many teachers and parents of early learners instinctively develop literacy skills before the children can even read.

    When we read a story out loud to a child, we often ask questions about the narrative as we turn the pages: What is going to happen next? How do you think …. feels? Why is …?

    These questions set the foundations for literacy.

    Working with a reading text

    Too often, the comprehension questions that teachers ask about a text are mechanical. They ask the student to “lift” the information out of the text.

    A tale of two dragons

    "Once upon a time, there was an island in the sea. One day, people were working in the fields. The sun was shining and there was one cloud in the sky. The cloud was a strange shape and moving towards the island. Soon the cloud was very big. Then a small boy looked up."

    Taken from English Code, Unit 4, p. 62

    Typical comprehension questions based on the text would be:

    • Where were the people working?
    • How many clouds were in the sky?

    These questions do not really reflect on the meaning of the text and do not lead to a critical analysis. While these simple questions are a good checking mechanism, they don’t help develop literacy skills.

    If we want to develop critical readers, we need to incorporate a critical analysis of reading texts into class work through a deep reading comprehension. We can organize the comprehension into three types.

    1. Text level

    Comprehension at “text level” is about exploring the meaning of individual words and phrases in a text. Examples for the text above could be:

    • Find words that show the story is a fairy tale.
    • Underline a sentence about the weather.

    Other text-level activities include:

    • Finding words in the text from a definition
    • Identifying opinions in the text
    • Finding verbs of speech
    • Finding and classifying words or phrases

    2. Between the lines

    Comprehension “between the lines” means speculating and making guesses with the information we already have from the text. This type of literacy activity often involves lots of questions and discussions with the students. You should encourage students to give good reasons for their opinions. An example for the text above could be:

    • What do you think the cloud really is?

    Other “Between the lines” activities include:

    • Discussing how characters in a story feel and why
    • Discussing characters’ motivation
    • Identifying the most important moments in a story
    • Speculating about what is going to happen next
    • Identifying possible events from fantasy events

    Literacy activities are not only based on fiction. We need to help students be critical readers of all sorts of texts. The text below is factual and informative:

    What skills do you need for ice hockey?

    "Ice hockey players should be very good skaters. They always have good balance. They change direction very quickly and they shouldn't fall over. Players should also have fast reactions because the puck moves very quickly."

    Taken from English Code, Level 4, p. 96

    “Between the lines” activities for this text could be:

    • What equipment do you need to play ice hockey?
    • What is the purpose of this piece of text?

    3. Behind the lines

    Comprehension “behind the lines” is about the information we, the readers, already have. Our previous knowledge, our age, our social background and many other aspects change the way we understand and interpret a text.

    An example for the text above could be:

    • What countries do you think are famous for ice hockey?

    Sometimes a lack of socio-cultural knowledge can lead to misunderstanding. Look at the text below.

    Is the relationship between Ms Turner and Jack Roberts formal or informal?

    73 Highlands Road Oxbo, Wisconsin 54552
    April 11th

    Dear Ms. Tamer,
    Some people want to destroy the forest and build an airport. This forest is a habitat for many wolves. If they destroy the forest, the wolves will leave the forest. If the wolves leave the forest, there will be more rabbits. This won't be good for our forest.
    Please build the airport in a different place. Please don't destroy the forest.

    Kind regards, Jack Robers

    Taken from English code, Level 4, unit 5, Writing Lab

    If your students are unaware of the convention of using Dear to start a letter in English, they may not answer this question correctly.

    Other “Behind the lines” literacy activities include:

    • Identifying the type of text
    • Imagining extra information based on the readers’ experiences
    • Using existing knowledge to check a factual account
    • Identifying false information

    Examples:

    • What job do you think Ms Turner has?
    • Do you think Jack lives in a village or a city?
    • Do wolves live in forests?

    Literacy is more than reading

    From the activities above, it’s clear that a literacy scheme develops more than reading skills. As students speculate and give their opinions, they talk and listen to each other.

    A literacy scheme can also develop writing skills. The text analysis gives students a model to follow in their writing. In addition, a literacy scheme works on higher-order thinking skills such as analysis, deduction and summary.

    Developing literacy skills so that students become active, critical readers should be a key part of educational programs at all ages. Literacy activities based on a reading text can be especially useful for the foreign language class.

    With literacy activities, we can encourage students:

    • To use the text as a springboard for communicating ideas and opinions
    • To analyze the text as a model for writing activities
    • To see how language is used in context
    • To explore the meanings of words

    More crucially, we are developing critical readers for the future.

  • Two Young children high fiving one another

    The importance of teaching values to young learners

    By Katharine Scott

    Values in education

    The long years children spend at school are not only about acquiring key knowledge and skills. At school, children also learn to work together, share, exchange opinions, disagree, choose fairly, and so on. We could call these abilities social skills as they help children live and flourish in a wider community than their family circle.

    Social skills are not necessarily the same as social values. Children acquire social skills from all kinds of settings. The tools they use to resolve problems will often come from examples. In the playground, children observe each other and notice behavior. They realize what is acceptable to the other children and which strategies are successful. Some of the things they observe will not reflect healthy social values.

    Part of a school’s mission is to help children learn social skills firmly based on a shared set of values. Many schools recognize this and have a program for education in values.

    What values are we talking about?

    Labeling is always tricky when dealing with an abstract concept such as social values. General ideas include:

    • living in a community, collaborating together
    • respecting others in all of human diversity
    • caring for the environment and the surroundings
    • having a sense of self-worth.

    At the root of these values are ethical considerations. While it may seem that primary education is too early for ethics, children from a very young age do have a sense of fairness and a sense of honesty. This doesn’t mean that children never lie or behave unfairly. Of course they do! But from about three years old, children know that this behavior is not correct, and they complain when they come across it in others.

    In the school context, social values are too often reduced to a set of school rules and regulations. Typical examples are:

    • 'Don't be late!'
    • 'Wait your turn!'
    • 'Pick up your rubbish!'
    • 'Don't invent unkind nicknames'.

    While all these statements reflect important social values, if we don’t discuss them with the children, the reasoning behind each statement gets lost. They become boring school rules. And we all know that it can be fun to break school rules if you can get away with it. These regulations are not enough to represent an education in values.

    School strategies

    At a school level, successful programs often focus on a specific area of a values syllabus. These programs involve all members of a school community: students, teachers, parents, and administrative staff.

    Here are some examples of school programs:

    Caring for the environment

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    • a system of recycling
    • a vegetable garden
    • initiatives for transforming to renewable energy
    • a second-hand bookstore.

    Anti-bullying programs

    As,many schools have anti-bullying policies to deal with bullying incidents. However, the most effective programs also have training sessions for teachers and a continuous program for the children to help them identify bullying behavior. Activities include:

    • empathy activities to understand different points of view
    • activities to develop peer responsibility about bullying
    • activities aimed at increasing children’s sense of self-worth.

    Anti-racism programs

    Combating negative racial stereotypes has, until recently, relied mainly on individual teacher initiatives. However, as racial stereotypes are constructed in society, it would be useful to have a school-wide program. This could include:

    • materials focusing on the achievements of ethnic minorities
    • school talks from members of ethnic minority communities
    • empathy activities to understand the difficulties of marginalized groups.
    • study of the culture and history of ethnic minorities.

    As children learn from observed behavior, it’s important that everyone in the school community acts consistently with the values in the program.