We have been given a subscription to Mindscreen – all opinions are ours. These blogs will chart our progress. We have not yet finished the course, I will be posting as we go along.
We have been following the Mindscreen course for a couple of weeks now. In my previous post we had completed the Free Child Self Esteem Check and had just embarked on the Full Mindscreen Experience.
Recently it was half term and I took the opportunity to complete the first four lesson plans of our Mindscreen Experience with Big L
It was really nice as we took ourselves off upstairs, put some calming music on and spent some quality time together every day.
The lessons aren’t actually online, you will need to print them out and I would suggest you prepare everything in advance. Mindscreen suggest that you put everything in a file or ring binder which is what I have done.
I printed off the handouts, lesson plans, the “Discovering more about yourself and others” booklet from Teaching and Learning Resources and Big L’s profile which is under the Mindscreen Experience tab. You will need all of these as you progress as you refer back to the profile. Your child uses the Learner Diary and you use the Parent-Carer Guide (I used it online, rather than printing it off). The Parent-Carer guide will help you guide your child through each lesson.
You will also need a pen or pencil and pad to write on. Some required post it notes but I improvised.
Each Mindscreen lesson took between 30 minutes and an hour to complete
The lessons are found under Teaching & Learning resources and then lesson plans. Each lesson has a different objective.
Mindscreen Lesson One: easyAwareness
The objective of Easy Awareness is to:
Give your child the opportunity to learn about their own personal characteristics and begin building their self awareness
This is a great lesson to help your child understand themselves and their behaviour more and to help them harness their natural strengths.
My favourite exercise from this lesson asked the child to circle 3 words from each of the four sections of the “How I see myself” exercise. These twelve words are eventually whittled down to “six words that best describe me”. Big L’s were Self Ruling, Reliable, Considerate, Friendly, Charming and Creative – pretty accurate I would say. Children are told to remind themselves of these words if they ever doubt themselves.
The final part of the lesson asked what he had learnt and I can say it was certainly positive and most welcome.
Mindscreen Lesson Two: easyBelief
The objective here is to:
Give your child the opportunity to explore how their own beliefs are formed. Help them to understand that their beliefs drive their behaviour. Give them a simple technique to hep them dispel negative beliefs and encourage positive ones
This was an interesting one revolving around the story about someone who has a bad experience with dogs over and over again and how that experience would lead them to believe that all dogs are bad. How our beliefs are formed and how our beliefs can be self limiting or indeed self enabling.
I really enjoyed this lesson. Having done a bit of CBT myself it reminded me a lot of the lessons I learnt during that.
It also helps your child understand that if you re told something often enough you might come to believe it. I told him a story about a friend of mine telling me I sang like a wolf in secondary school. I was later asked to sing in a band but didn’t because I was convinced I couldn’t sing. I good example of a self limiting belief.
There was also a lesson about self belief and that you need to have self belief to succeed. Would any of their idols, in Big L’s case these were his Year 4 teacher, Barack Obama and Dan TDM (an eclectic mix) have succeeded if they had listened to people telling them they couldn’t do it?
At the end of the lesson we learnt to replace destructive thoughts and feelings with positive ones
Mindscreen Lesson three – easyConfidence
Give your child the opportunity to explore their own strengths and talents and build their self-confidence
The beginning of this lesson was about how you hold yourself and portray confidence physically, quite literally walking with your head held high. That this physical presence portrays confidence to others.
Next we learnt why it is good to know what your strengths and weaknesses are. When we know what they are we can play to our strengths and work on our weaknesses. Partnering up with people who have the opposite makes a good team as you can play to each other’s strengths and cover weaknesses.
They then refer back to their About Me and underline all the statements they strongly agree with, then deciding which two are the most positive. They then have two statements they can refer back to whenever they need reassurance.
Lesson Four – easySkills
Help your child better understand what their unique skills are and how they use them. Help your child begin a personal “bank” of skills they “know” they have.
In this lesson you ask your child to think of something they have done recently that they really enjoyed. They are asked to write or draw the activity; Big L really enjoys drawing comic style so this really played to his strengths. He chose Minecraft as his activity.
It asks you to think of two of the skills used in this activity, and then how you used these skills during the activity.
In basic terms it shows children that they have skills that they apply to all sorts of activities. For Big L he uses designing and seeing the bigger picture to play Minecraft. He likes building big structures, houses and farms. To do this he has to design them from scratch and he needs to think about the end result before embarking. For instance, where he is building it, what materials he will use, how many animals he will have, what he will feed them and so on.
For Big L, realising that he is using actual skills that he can apply elsewhere in life, school and eventually his career, while playing a game was an eye opener. Knowing that he is good at designing, planning and thinking about the end result and that he can utilise that skill elsewhere.
What we thought about our first four Mindscreen lessons
OK, I will be honest here I thought it was going to be completely online and that I could kind of let Big L “get on with it”, this is not the case as you have guide the through the lessons. You will need to print off the lessons and so on so a printer is a necessity. Each lesson took 30 minutes or more and we really enjoyed spending that time together, focusing on Big L and his self esteem and confidence. I was able to draw from my own experience and we were able to discuss all sorts of scenarios. I think we learnt a lot about each other as well as learning the Mindscreen lessons.
The time we spent together was precious and knowing that we are building his (and my if I’m honest) confidence and self esteem is priceless. These are skills he can refer back to throughout life.
We still have the final four lessons to complete so keep an eye out for that.
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