We know that emotions drive attention, and that many of our students walk into our classrooms in a hyper-vigilant brain state, constantly scanning the environment for feelings of safety and familiarity. If a child or adolescent has experienced some form of daily ambient trauma, these executive functions can be underdeveloped or stagnant. Sustained attention and working memory are executive functions that are not fully developed until early adulthood. Paying attention and being focused are prerequisites to sustainable learning. Students love to learn about their own neurobiology and when they understand what distracts or derails their train of thought in the frontal lobes, they can implement strategies to help them pay attention and focus. Her changing feelings were distracting headquarters (the prefrontal cortex) in her brain and therefore her train of thought was derailed a few times. We saw fear take over Riley's train of thought on her first day of school, followed by anger and sadness. We know that the brain never stops working unless we are dead, and as my fourth-grade students suggested last week, maybe our trains take other routes when we are sleeping, and quite possibly our subconscious thought processes are the engineers. In Inside Out, we watched Riley's train of thought run through her mind during the days and stop or slow down when she was sleeping. Islands of self could assist in developing a thesis and the foundations for nonfiction writing, science research, and the development of a hypothesis. Islands of self could be compared to building mathematical operations and algorithms.Ħ. These islands could be integrated into language arts and history curricula, and of course into personal narratives.Ĭonsider teaching a history, biology and geography lesson looking at changes in people, landforms, and our bodies, and how the environment and cultural shifts create and modify new islands of self.ĥ. Create a Future Island and encourage students to imagine, innovate, and begin planning what social and emotional topography will be a part of this island.Ĥ. How many of our students would have an island of mistrust or an island of a broken heart?ģ. Self-reflection and self-observation are the building blocks for cognitive and academic growth.Ĭreating islands of self is an activity for all ages and grade levels as students begin to see analogies, contrast, differences, and similarities in and out of school. The more that students know about themselves, the stronger learners they are. This is a fabulous strategy for gathering perceptual data. Create and display islands of self at the beginning of the year, explaining that these could change based on our experiences. Change is life, and much like real islands, our islands can grow healthier or diminish and weaken.Ģ. As educators, we begin to model this activity by explaining to students that our islands are always changing based on our interests, passions, affirmations, experiences, relationships, and perceptions. Ask students to identify and share their islands of self. The students loved this type of reflection, giving me a snapshot into their worlds of beliefs, private logic, and sense of self.ġ. Not only did they share the names of their islands, they also explained why and how these islands developed. Below are examples of their islands of self. As I began delving into this activity, I interviewed several students age 7-17. Validation is an effective brain-aligned strategy that tells a student, "I hear you and I understand." Validating a child's or adolescent's feelings helps the student to "feel felt," which is integral to every student's emotional, social, and cognitive development.
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