Soaring in 2022

 Morning Circles

Evidence suggests that by using the Berry street model will help us to ensure our students are able to access the social and emotional development they need to access the learning. 

(This is available on the BSEM website here)

One of the ways we can achieve this is by starting out day with a morning circle.  The basic outline involves practices which create a positive start, community and a sense of belonging. 

The proposed steps will be: 

1. Greeting
2. Check in with higher needs children
3. Flash focus (a focus on our school wide expectation for that week)
4. Announcements 
5. Positive Primer to create an upbeat mood
6. Brain break to use for the day
7. Friday Reflections on what went well.

This will be rolled out across the school.  

My personal thoughts:

I am really excited as this aligns very closely with our Morning Meeting. As we have older kids I would love to keep calling it a Morning meeting and I am not sure how easy it will be to have a circle in our already giant classroom (54 kids). 

It is very similar in the steps also, as we currently have 

1. Greeting (the students greet each other and ourselves with a waterfall roll)
2. Announcements
3. Positive primer (I tell a joke every morning- which the kids can add to)
4. We have reflection everyday on our assets at silent time after lunch. 

So this will not just be easy to implement, ti also means that some of the things we are doing are backed by more evidence that we didn't even have access to! 

Zones of Regulation

This program also includes ways to help zones manage their own emotions and behaviours. We will be using the "Zones of Regulation' which helps the students identitfy their feelings, articulate that to others, work out what they can do to help themselves get into the ready to learn space and then also take action. This common knowledge also help create empathy in the classroom because behaviours and feelings are then relatable. 

For ti to work in our classrooms we will need to be mindful of 

• embedding the language school wide
• ensuring we are giving the students time to learn the tools to regulate their behaviour including:

1. matching emotions with language
2. acknowledging feelings in real time and later
3. having a toolkit of strategies to pull from 
4. self regulate, let them do it
5. give them time to make sense of it

This aligns nicely with the curriculum asset of being a self manager. 

TOOLS: 

Visual charts

calm down toolkit

fortnightly lessons 

courage rooms

gross motor activities