Leadership Experience for Academic Direction: Mindful Math
Mindful Math is a program that my teaching partner, Katie Polkonik, and I started at David Maxwell for our LEAD project. It combines mindful breathing with math to prepare students for EQAO. Upon approaching Mr. O’Neil about ideas for our project, he was hoping we could create a plan to assist students with EQAO. We plan to implement this program every Friday until EQAO during their 2nd recess.
We sent home permission forms with students in grade 3 and we received 13 signed forms from students who were eager to learn! We launched this program Friday April 21st. It was a fantastic learning experience. The students absolutely loved the mindful breathing piece. We dimmed the lights while students got comfortable on the carpet and played a mindful breathing video. It was very peaceful in the room and every student was engaged. We emphasized the importance of mindful breathing to students, especially during stressful situations, like writing tests. Our hopes from this program is that students will learn mindful breathing techniques, so they can utilize these strategies when they become stressed. The breathing techniques are helpful strategies that can be used in multiple contexts and tests are just one of the various times mindfulness can be used.
My placement school is a part of Full Court Press, which assists in preparing students for EQAO. My teaching partner and I were not aware of this program when we initially created our program. However, it has worked out in our benefit because we decided to use the questions that the majority of students struggled with during Full Court Press to expand upon. On April 21st, the first question we had them solve was about pictographs, as the feedback from the teachers from Full Court Press was that many students struggled with identifying how many friends per smiley face, therefore drawing and labeling the bars incorrectly. After my teaching partner and I went through details of the question and how to approach it, students were able to grasp the concept of the question more confidently. 
Mindful Math Video:
https://doc-0k-9k-docs.googleusercontent.com/docs/securesc/7k99t1ejpg0hgrugnrplh37snj3pd7b0/itks9me71iaa2b23tnrh36d79a5qv108/1523815200000/07812596803055371288/07924294515094433968/1r9S4EVAUSDmzfprDPGxTjCs9HwwYh1NR?e=download&h=10471564914220779685&nonce=0lo87b372278q&user=07924294515094433968&hash=6koc3csk44s9lmh820f18aq1lpdpt1ju