• CEESA
  • Conference 2016
  • Lectures
  • How to Have a ‘Smiling Mind’ and Focused Learners: Mindfulness in the Classroom by Charaine Poutasi, Ian Penrose, Liz Hurford and Meral Soguksu
Tuesday, 02 February 2016 10:59

How to Have a ‘Smiling Mind’ and Focused Learners: Mindfulness in the Classroom by Charaine Poutasi, Ian Penrose, Liz Hurford and Meral Soguksu

A 'Smiling Mind,' increases productivity and engagement allowing learners to be fully aware of their learning and enables them to direct their own learning through focused interactions.

What is a 'Smiling Mind?'

Mindfulness in the classroom allows children to be engaged and aware of themselves and this leads to increased productivity and engagement leading to sustained learning. Mindfulness reduces stress and helps change negative behaviour and contributes to changing fixed mindsets.

Research: Why is mindfulness important for learning?

Looking at research from Monash University Course on Mindfulness

Impact on Learning: Using mindfulness techniques to help students to focus on the tasks at hand. Improve engagement and student learning through focus on 'now and present'. Children can then learn their own mindful techniques and to critique their own and others' practice.

How to use technology to enable mindfulness:

  • Smiling Mind App
  • Go noodle
  • Data collection/anecdotal notes/videos/work samples

Charaine Poutasi

charaine-poutasi

Charaine Poutasi has been an educator in the Early Years sector for the last 24 years.

Charaine Poutasi has been an educator in the Early Years sector for the last 24 years.

She lives and resides in Istanbul and has been teaching Early Year's 3 and 4 at Istanbul International Community School for the past 6 years. Before that teaching internationally in Ukraine and England.

She is from New Zealand and taught for 10 years before moving abroad. Charaine is interested in mindfulness and adapting this in school to help students to be in the present, more focused for learning and to also encourage young children the importance of mindfulness. 

Ian Penrose

Ian-Penrose

Ian Penrose has been teaching for 23 years.

Ian Penrose has been teaching for 23 years.  He has taught in rural public and private schools in Australia as well as internationally. 

In addition to all grades K-6, Ian has worked as a support teacher (Learning Difficulties) and trained in Reading Recovery.

The bulk of Ian's experience has been in grades K-3 and he was Assistant Principal for 5 years at Ashford Central School in New South Wales. He has an extensive background in music, choir and drama is currently teaching grade 2 at IICS. 

In his spare time, Ian enjoys travelling, reading and spending time with friends, especially his partner, Aral and their cat Charlie. Ian is part of a study group at IICS, investigating the effect of mindfulness on grade 2 students as well as adults. He is looking forward to a professional dialogue with you about mindfulness in your classroom and your life.

 

Liz Hurford

Liz-Hurford

Liz has been teaching for twenty seven years.

Liz has been teaching for twenty seven years.

She taught in the U.K. for ten years and has since been teaching internationally for the last seventeen years. She has taught between the age ranges of Kindergarten to Grade 5 but most recently has mostly taught Grades 2 and 3. Liz is currently living in Istanbul, which she loves! Her hobbies are sailing, eating good food and travelling.

She is part of the faculty at IICS and is implementing the practices of Mindfulness. Liz is also part of a professional learning Group at IICS who are also researching and practicing mindfulness in the class.

 

Meral Soguksu

meral-soguksu

Hello, my name is Meral Soguksu.

Hello, my name is Meral Soguksu. I am Turkish/British and live in Istanbul with my two teenage children, two cats and a dog.

I grew up in the UK and came to live in Turkey full time 15 years ago.

I have a BA in Spanish and Portuguese and have been qualified to teach EAL since 1995. I also have an MEd in Teaching EAL.

I have a passion for teaching and learning languages and have been teaching EAL for over 10 years. This is my fifth year at IICS teaching at The Hisar Campus, where I also provide Learning Support and teach Turkish Language A classes.

I enjoy reading modern fiction, funny poetry for children and baking cakes.  You might also catch me running along the Bosphorus from time to time which I find helps me to focus better.