\ This is a programme for training the skills of social-emotional regulation and repair through mindfulness.

\ Using attractive audiovisual aids, it provides tools adapted to each stage to work in the classroom.

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The Director-General for Early Childhood, Innovation and Educational Community, Amanda Fernández, the Director of the Institute for Coexistence and School Success (Convivèxit), Aina Amengual and Caterina Adrover, from the Convièxit team, today presented the Programme for the Training of Socio-emotional Regulation and Repair Skills through Mindfulness, aimed at infant and primary school pupils.

This is a Convivèxit initiative that makes a tool available to all educational centres to create spaces of physical and mental serenity in the classroom and which arises from the experience carried out in the 2017-2018 academic year in an infant and primary school in the Pla de Mallorca area. The aim is that the systematic practise of this programme will have important benefits in the development of positive attitudes, in the emotional autonomy of the students and, obviously, in the improvement of the school climate and coexistence.

From today, the Programme will be available on the website of the Regional Ministry, with a compilation of various mindfulness techniques aimed at infant and primary school pupils and adapted to 4 different cycles (from 3 to 6 years, from 6 to 8 years, from 8 to 10 years and from 10 to 12 years), as well as to the teaching staff, support teams and specialists.

Mindfulness in the classroom for the improvement of concentration

The recommendation for schools is to implement the Programme and carry out the actions systematically, prioritising certain moments such as the beginning of the school day and the return from recess, as well as any moment that the teaching team considers appropriate (moments prior to an assessment situation or circumstances that may generate tension).

The objectives of the Programme are:

To promote the improvement of the ability to be aware or to be conscious.
To encourage a willingness to learn from self-reflection and calmness.
To promote the improvement of participation in the classroom by favouring impulse control.
To foster the development of the ability to recognise, understand and manage emotions, favouring resilience in conflicts and frustrations.
To encourage the development of concentration and attention skills.
To promote the general improvement of well-being and health.
Among the benefits of implementing mindfulness practice in schools are the following:

Improved relaxation competence
Promotion of emotional intelligence (intrapersonal and interpersonal)
Improving classroom climate by reducing conflict.
Enhancement of cognitive skills and processes, such as memory, attention and concentration.
Improved school coexistence
The resources range from a fish that teaches breathing techniques in early childhood education to a frog that shows meditation to primary school pupils or music that invites primary school pupils to walk with stars.

Encouraging the acquisition of a state of awareness and calm in children

Experts agree that children have an innate ability to live fully in the present, the here and now, a quality that they forget as they grow up. This loss is largely due to a certain degree of overstimulation, which is responsible, among other things, for the appearance of an occasional level of anxiety that is difficult to control, the maintenance of behaviours related to low impulse control, or the deficit of cognitive skills, such as the ability to maintain continuous attention. It is, therefore, necessary for children to be able to pay attention and to train themselves to be attentive and aware in the present moment.

One of the results will consequently be an improvement in concentration and a reduction of impulsive reactions. Therefore, learning to experiment with attention, patience and trust will establish a circuit of conscious attention which, as scientific evidence shows, will have a direct and positive impact on the so-called executive functions (attention, memory, cognitive flexibility), as well as on the different learning processes and personal development of pupils.