Cultivating Mindfulness with Third Grade Students via Classroom-Based Interventions

Abstract

Forty-five third grade students, from six different classrooms at a local elementary school, participated in our 3-year study. We delivered three 30-min classroom lessons on mindfulness using a curriculum that included modified lessons from the Mindful Schools and MindUp curricula as well as material we developed. We also provided booster sessions for the same students in fourth and fifth grades. Classroom teachers from the participating classrooms as well as the students anonymously shared comments about their experiences. Students were given two measures. These measures included the Mindful Student Questionnaire (MSQ; Renshaw and O’Malley 2014) and the Positive Experiences at School Scale (Furlong et al. Child Indicators Research, 6, 753–775, 2013). This article describes the intervention used and reports the findings from the analysis of quantitative and qualitative data. Related to the classroom experience, 100% of teacher comments were favorable. Intervention: Qualitative comments from students were positive. Quantitative results indicate that mindfulness scores did not increase.