I had so much fun this week teaching the students about self-control during our guidance lessons. I've wanted to do more hands-on activities, and this was an excellent way to try one out. I did some research on Pinterest about self-control, and I came across this post about "The Marshmallow Test." It was originally a study done by Stanford Univeristy in the 60s and 70s where they studied delayed gratification in young children. Long story short, they found that the children who waited longer for the reward were more successful later on in life (read here for more information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment). After I had done some research, I was curious to know how to apply this to a classroom setting. I found a post on Teaching in Blue Jeans (http://www.teachinginbluejeans.com/blog-swap-sunday-with-corrina/) where she had done this with her classroom. I followed her format, except I had a discussion at the beginning about what self-control is and how we can show it. I used a flipchart on ActiveInspire to help lead the discussion. I then gave the kids one marshmallow and told them they could have it now, or they could have two if they waited. I told them they could not eat it, lick it, or bite off part of it to get the second one. At first, I told the kids they couldn't touch it, but I didn't see the results as I wanted. I changed it to where they could pick it up and play with it, thinking that it would make it harder to resist. Once I told them that, then I had students in each class eat the marshmallow. On average, the younger kids found it more difficult to resist the marshmallow, which I expected. After I had waited about 10 minutes, I gave the students the second one. We had a discussion about what they did to resist the marshmallow and how they distracted themselves. We also talked about if we thought it would be harder or easier to do this if they were by themselves. I then showed them a video of some younger students who did this experiment by themselves (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX_oy9614HQ). We followed it up with a review about self-control and what we learned from the lesson. Overall, this was a pretty fun experience, and I think the kids enjoyed getting a sweet treat during the day. They wanted to do it again so they could get a third marshmallow!
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