MindUp-

The past few weeks our mindfulness has been focused on our senses...

Mindful Listening

- helps us choose which sounds to focus our attention on and help us to be thoughtful in the way we hear and respond to the words of others.


RAS (Reticular activating system) filters sounds and picks what is most important to listen to and respond to.  A mindful student is able to redirect attention to the task at hand.

Mindful Seeing

- enables us to better observe ourselves, other people and our surroundings to more fully enjoy and learn from them.  

- observe more details- helps to read social cues, 

- focus on texture, shape, colour, lines, and size of one object.

Mindful Tasting

- to fully appreciate the food we eat.

- requires slowing down to savor our food and notice flavour, texture and temperature.

- relaxed and aware, not multitasking (often eat without paying attention)

- prefrontal cortex is paying attention, absorbing details and thinking clearly

Canada province/territory project

Students were put into groups of two and each assigned a province or territory of Canada.  Only using non-fiction books on their province, they researched about their province (looking at text features, bold words, subtitles, etc.).  The research focus was on the provincial bird/flower, capital city, nickname, when they became part of Canada, landscape, climate and natural resources.  Students then represented their facts through pictures or symbols on the shape of their province/territory and wrote an artist statement explaining their art.

All groups did a great job and worked on their collaboration skills.