Mental Health and Wellbeing News

Over the course of Term 2 staff will be involved in Professional Development in the area of Social Emotional Learning. We have a school closure day on the 6^th May and this will be devoted to this area. We will then begin to implement strategies for building the social emotional capacity of students within our school. SEL is defined by CASEL (The Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning) as the process through which children acquire and apply knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. By building these competencies, children can improve their ability to understand and manage their emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain healthy relationships, and make responsible decisions.  

The first area we as a school will look at is self-awareness. Self-awareness is the abilities to understand one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behaviour across contexts. Below are some of the strategies we will incorporate within the classroom and I have adapted them so they can be used at home.

• Explicit vocabulary (using a wide variety of feeling words to describe feelings)
• Reading books with your child, then discussing how characters might be feeling and why.
• Assisting your child to recognise and name their feelings. For example, "it looks like you might be feeling disappointed, can you tell me what happened?".
• Encouraging your child to articulate how they feel and why, using "I" statements. For example, I feel X because....
• Explaining to your child that all feelings are okay, but some behaviours are not. For example, it is okay to feel angry, however, it is not okay to hurt others. 

If you would like further information on social emotional learning please do not hesitate to contact me.

Deb Owens

Mental health and Wellbeing Leader