A Holistic Approach to

A Holistic Approach to Learning in Year 2

By Kim Powell, Year 2 Leader of Learning and Welfare

We are all well aware that well-being is a key priority at Bangkok Patana and has been for some time; it is integral to our values. But how does this important value manifest itself within the Key Stage 1 classroom? Year 2 have been adopting a number of strategies to ensure that happiness and peace of mind at school are kept at the forefront of their learning, and that they themselves mirror the values of being balanced and fulfilled, kind and compassionate.

When walking into a Year 2 classroom, you will notice the muted and calming colours within our learning environment, cosy spaces dedicated to communication and problem solving, and time for daily mindfulness practice prioritised on each class timetable. All these features are integral to our learning in Year 2.

So why do we promote muted tones and clutter-free displays? In 1947, Frank Mahnke, a researcher working in the USA, found that colour can affect attention spans, creativity, feelings of safety, and comfort levels in a space. Dr Willard R Daggett and colleagues found that, ‘Colour is an important factor in the physical learning environment and is a major element that impacts student achievement, as well as teacher effectiveness.’

We also know that colour can affect mood, and how moods can be described by certain colours, for example, the phrase, ‘see red’ to describe anger. We often see soft blues and greens used to induce feelings of calm in certain environments such as doctor’s waiting rooms, or the dentist. So too, are children’s emotions affected by the colours that surround them. Therefore, classrooms are at their best when sensitively decorated in calming colours. When colours are chosen from a natural palette, they make the space feel open and calm. They also enable the resources and most importantly, the learners using the space, to feel more relaxed, at ease and able to concentrate; skills essential for successful learning.

Further understanding of how the physical environment can support emotional well-being, speaking and listening skills and general engagement is critical in the development of ‘balanced and fulfilled’ children. Through the use of ‘Zen Dens’; cosy, comforting and welcoming spaces within the classroom, we can promote communication and problem solving. These spaces support the development of children’s communication skills and include features which are beneficial for children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs, as well as supporting our English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners. In developing these spaces, we are

removing barriers to communication. As well as scaffolding communication, these spaces also support learning as well as social and emotional development.

One specific strategy that is encouraged within these communication rich environments is managing conflict through ‘Peaceful Problem Solving’. This method of conflict resolution encourages empathy, problem-solving skills and understanding the points of view of others as well as devising ways to make things right in a fair way. Through this strategy, we aim to recognise and act on the worth of self, the worth of others and our interconnectedness as part of one community; demonstrating kindness and compassion, as well as being responsible and honest global citizens.

Learning to solve problems peacefully involves many social and emotional skills including the ability to encode, interpret and reason about social-emotional information. Solving problems peacefully is critical to the development of positive peer relationships which in turn have long lasting implications for school achievement and social-emotional development. It is also critical in developing the ability to regulate our own emotions.

So, if our learning environments are already calm-inducing spaces which develop connectedness, why do we also prioritise mindfulness? Much research has shown that through regular mindfulness practices, we can increase our ability to regulate emotions, decrease stress, anxiety and depression. It can also help us to focus our attention, as well as enable us to observe our thoughts and feelings without judgment. As well as improving our mental health, it is well-researched that partaking in regular mindfulness sessions can also have an effect on our physical health. Mindfulness can help relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce chronic pain, improve sleep and alleviate gastrointestinal difficulties, to name but a few. If we can enable children to form habitual mindfulness practises that become part of their daily routine, they will be well-equipped with the tools to draw upon throughout their future lives and hopefully benefit from its long term gains.

But what about the short term gains? Over the last few decades, brain scans and neuroimaging have helped to quantify that meditation techniques can promote significant changes in brain areas associated with concentration. One study by Fadel Zeidan, a postdoctoral researcher at Wake Forest University School of Medicine in the US, found that

meditation-trained participants showed a significant improvement in their critical cognitive skills (and performed significantly higher in cognitive tests than a control group) after only four days of training for only 20 minutes each day.

So why hasn’t mindfulness been a priority before now? The concept of being able to shape the internal wiring of our brains (neuroplasticity) through mindfulness techniques is a relatively new one. Mindfulness meditation has the ability to reduce the size of the amygdala, a region of the brain that determines how much stress we experience and is central in modulating our fear responses (Wilson, 2013). It also increases the size of the prefrontal cortex in the brain, the area responsible for decision making and executive functioning. This results in decreased emotional reactivity and improved decision-making skills as well as increased emotional stability.

Even more crucially, it is now evident that these skills of mindfulness meditation do not require years of monk-like training. We can, in fact, boost our own cognitive

abilities and increase the ability to stay engaged on a task with just a few minutes of regular practice each day.

So, fostering positive self-esteem, cultivating feelings of acceptance, adequacy and self worth, as well as educating learners in how to develop an awareness of their social, emotional and cognitive skills, we can nurture better adjusted learners which in turn leads to an increase in academic success. We can be assured that if we nurture these attributes in our children, they will possess benefits which reach far beyond their formal education.