Maintaining stable and positive mental health is a very important skill for students in all grades. During today’s YD lesson, this skill was reinforced and many new techniques were also introduced to the eighth graders.

In the beginning of the lesson, teachers created an insightful mind map to help students to organize their thoughts on pressure and stress. Students were led to freely express their ideas on the connotations that these terms give. They were further encouraged to share their own methods on how they have tried to overcome stress in their daily life. After that, students watched an extract from a TED-Talk -- how the pressure to be perfect in our social media, in school, at work, is driving a rise in mental illness, especially among young people. Students worked on several discussion questions after watching the short video and exchanged ideas within their group.

The second activity was a close reading about how our body responds to stress and healthy ways to cope. Stress is your bod’s way of responding to any kind of demand or threat. It is important for one to sense when the level of stress is exceeding what they can handle. The right amount of stress can be helpful, motivating one to stretch and challenge themselves, yet an overwhelming amount of stress can have a negative impact on your health, mood, productivity, relationships, as well as your quality of life

To wrap up the YD lesson and the students’ entire school day, the last activity was a chance for students to utilize what they had just learned. They got to take a rest and calm down from a day of hard work. Students could doodle, write a poem, sleep, or do whatever they preferred to relax themselves.

To regulate stress, students should have a positive attitude and outlook, a sense of control, the ability to deal with emotions, and a strong network of supportive friends and family members. From this engaging lesson, students have learned various methods to improve their ability to handle stress, and these techniques will definitely help them go through their school-life in the future with more leisure and confidence.

Written by 8(9) Alison

Supervised by Sally Gibbs

Pictures by Grade 8 Photography SL Group

Edited by Serene Yang, Niall Keenan