Stoic is an app that encourages mindfulness in everyday life. Stoic can help you to track your mood and help you be aware of your mental health. This app guides you along meditations, breathing, tracks your mood, finding inspirational quotes, journaling and other reflective resources. 

Stoic is created by Maciej Lobodzinski in 2019. The app is free, unless you subscribe to the advanced version of the app, which costs $6-8 a month. 

• Here is a link to the app store
• Here is a hyperlink to a walk through of the app.

This app relates back to social media safety and emotional effects, as students are able to practice mindfulness by using this app, which may comfort students who are experiencing emotional stress due to negative experiences online. This app provides a positive experience where students are able to journal their emotions and use helpful prompts. Students can also use this app as a helpful way to track their breathing when they are feeling overwhelmed. This is helpful, as students can learn to monitor their own feelings and use tools when they are feeling overwhelmed. Journaling can be a good way to practice writing and fluency skills. Kids can also do experiments and/or graphing to monitor how their mood changes depending on how much time they spend on screens. This kind of activity should probably be used within 5th grade classrooms because of the nature of older kids having more access to the internet, but graphing activities and journaling would align with students within 3rd-5th grade.

Core Integration: 

• • This app could be integrated into a writing or reading lesson. The app provides journaling prompts along with quotes related to feelings and mindfulness. Some students may prefer to type their writing, which could be supported by the app. Students can also read the prompts and hand write their responses. Sometimes our best writing ideas happen when we are listening to our emotions, so this would be a great way to assist in the brainstorm process of writing. Students can take what they reflect on from the app, or from the below experiment, and use these as writing prompts.
  • This app could also be used in a science and/or math lesson where students monitor their moods. Students could set up an experiment to see if the amount of screen time they receive directly affects their mood. This would help students think about how they are spending their screen time and how it affects their mental health, while learning about how to set up a science experiment. An opinion piece of writing can follow this study. For math, this could be used where students can graph their moods for both after the use of screen time, and after the use of the app.
  • This app could also be used as a resource for students who need some mindfulness time to relax and process emotions. A device could be set up in the classroom, so that students can access the app when they are wanting to process their emotions or practice some deep breathing. 

Learning objectives: 

• Understanding healthy ways to cope with emotions and expressing emotions in healthy ways.
• Being mindful of our emotions.
• Using writing as a healthy way to cope with emotions and using resources around us to generate writing topics. 
• Implementing and conducting an experiment, and/or the collection of data to represent.

Standards:

NGSS does not have a Disciplinary Core Idea that would fit the topic of investigating this kind of experiment, however, much of the Nature of Science speaks about our drive for wonder and students being the forefront of their own investigating. The above core integration including the investigation could be used as a opening activity into this topic and when we have something we wonder, we can think like scientists and do the work to see if there are any findings. 

MATH: The below is CCSS Math Standard for 3rd grade, so 5th grade students would be expected to have already met this standard and be able to perform individually and/or more complexly, such as answering questions where they infer about the graphed data. 

3rd grade: Represent and interpret data.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.MD.B.3

Draw a scaled picture graph and a scaled bar graph to represent a data set with several categories. Solve one- and two-step “how many more” and “how many less” problems using information presented in scaled bar graphs. For example, draw a bar graph in which each square in the bar graph might represent 5 pets.

5th Grade:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.1

Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.3

Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.

NHES Standards:

Standard 1: Students will comprehend concepts related to health promotion and disease prevention to enhance health.

• MEH1.5.10 Describe the importance of being aware of one’s own feelings and of being sensitive to the feelings of others.

Standard 2: Students will analyze the influence of family, peers, culture, media, technology, and other factors on health behaviors.

• MEH 2.5.2 Identify relevant influences of peers on mental and emotional health practices and behavior.
• MEH 2.5.6 Describe how relevant influences of media and technology affect mental and emotional health practices and behavior.
• PHW 2.5.6 Describe how relevant influences of media and technology affect personal health and wellness-related practices and behaviors

HBO’s:

• • HBO 1: Express feelings in a healthy way
  • HBO 2: Express feelings that are mentally and emotionally healthy.
  • HBO 4: Prevent and manage emotional stress and anxiety in healthy ways.