Tell students that before they act quickly, it’s important to Freeze and Plan.Ī game of Freeze Dance will help students connect the idea of pausing in a moment of impulsivity to FREEZE their actions and PLAN their choices. You throw a ball towards a classmate who isn’t looking because you want them to play with you?.You take apart a friend’s Lego structure without asking first because you have an awesome building idea?.You start working on a test before the teacher gives all of the directions because you want to get it over with?.
It’s important to think about the consequences, or bad things, that might happen if we act on impulse. If we don’t think first, it’s called acting on impulse, but when we are able to Freeze our actions and Plan our choices– like when we decide it’s best not to take the cookie– we show impulse or self-control. What might happen if you took the cookie anyway?Īs you discuss this as a group, explain that sometimes it’s hard to walk away from things that we really want.What would you do? Would you wait until after dinner, or try to sneak one?.Explain that they would smell the cookies and would really want one, but they would also know what they had been told. Give the example of seeing a freshly baked plate of cookies, but being told by a parent to wait until after dinner to have one. Prompt: Begin by asking the group if they can think of a time when they were tempted to do something that they knew they should not do. This lesson does just that, and helps students explore and identify the consequences of impulsive behavior, practice self-control through a fun dancing activity, and learn the mantra Freeze and Plan! Walter Mischel noted, “If the conditions that facilitate self-control, and those that undermine it, could be identified, perhaps they could be harnessed to teach people who have trouble waiting to be better at it.” As the Marshmallow Experiment creator, Dr. This work can be practiced in the classroom, and a conversation about making good choices helps steer students on a path that reaps the benefits of delayed gratification.
As you might imagine, this created quite some interesting data as children wrestled with self-restraint and impulsivity! The test has been replicated again and again and, though there is some debate on the long-term implications of a child’s performance on the task, the famed experiment certainly has many merits in helping us understand the roots of temptation and the difficulty of controlling our impulses.įrom this and similar research, we’ve come to understand that children can learn to identify impulsive thinking and behavior, and can use this knowledge improve efforts to exhibit self-control. After being given one marshmallow, children who managed to wait for a period before eating it would receive a second one, while those who did not wait wouldn’t.
This experiment examined whether children could delay gratification if they recognized the consequences versus the reward for their behavior. There’s been a lot of research around impulsivity, self-control, and delayed gratification in kids, and the Marshmallow Test is perhaps the best known study. Learning to manage it takes time and patience. Ever find yourself asking a student who’s made a questionable choice, “Why would you do something like that?” only to be answered with, “I don’t know” and a shrug? When it seems like a student has acted on impulse, it can be frustrating– especially if a friend gets hurt or something gets broken– but as many teachers know, self-control is a complex skill and is something that many children struggle with.
0 kommentar(er)
