Recognising our emotions and identifying tools to manage them in 1/2 Piper

Understanding and working with The Zones of Regulation helps children to manage difficult emotions. This is known as ‘self-regulation’. Self-regulation can go by many names such as ‘self-control’, ‘impulse management’ and ‘self-management’.

From time to time, all of us - including adults - find it hard to manage strong feelings such as worry, anger, restlessness, fear or tiredness, and this stops us from getting on with our day effectively. These emotions often make it hard to learn and concentrate in school. The Zones of Regulation aims to teach children strategies to help them cope with these feelings so they can get back to feeling calm and ready to learn. Students in 1/2 Piper discussed ‘the tools’ we could use to help us when we are in a particular zone. We then made our own posters to show our understanding of these emotions and how we can deal with them respectfully.

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 Parents are encouraged to discuss ‘The Zones’ with students. The strategies we explored here can be used just as easily at home. If you would like more information on The Zones of Regulation, there’s a lot of support online or give us a ring at the office and we’ll set up a meeting with you.

Remember it’s ok to be in any zone – it’s what we do with those feelings/emotions that count.

 Nadine Davey – Principal

Kinder Sykes has had a wonderful week 7 of term 2.

Excitingly, we have been making sock puppets! As well as being cute and quirky, these little friends will help us use language in different ways during the rest of the term as we use them to put on puppet shows, retell stories, and recount adventures.

In numeracy, we have been exploring counting in a variety of ways, playing games such as those involving 1 or 2 dice, and bingo.  

Another big focus has been ourselves, and our names. We have been practicing writing letters, cutting them out and ordering them, and creating name paper chains. We’ve been drawing pictures of our families too: please feel free to visit the classroom and see the beautiful portraits.

In Science, Grade 2 Absolom has been working on creating dioramas to show our learning about the Solar System. We have had the opportunity to show our learning about Earth and Space in lots of creative ways. Some of us have chosen to make speeches, others have made posters and many of us are making dioramas! It’s been so fun learning in creative ways. We’ve also learnt heaps of cool facts about the solar system, here are some of our favourites: 

"The Sun is 15 million degrees Celsius" - Oliver 

"The star is a dwarf planet, a star and a ball of gas" - Rohan.

 We hope to be able to share our hard work with our families very soon! 

Children’s University (CU)

We have started meeting as a Children’s University Club on Friday lunch times. During these times we share important information as well as plan new learning experiences and projects to take home. Last week we handed out an important notice about CU. If your child did not bring this home, please ask them to pick one up from the CU desk in front of Ms Mel’s office. Also, outside my office are two boxes for CU. One is the ‘in’ box and one is the ‘out’ box. Students are asked to pop their CU books to the ‘in’ box when they are ready to claim learning hours. They will then need to check the ‘out’ box to see if I have had a chance to add their hours and stamp their passports. A reminder that photos of students doing their CU work can be emailed to me at mel.agustina@decyp.tas.gov.au. If you have time, there is also a display of CU projects being displayed in the end classroom in the upper corridor.

The Smith Family

We are excited that so many families have applied for scholarships. There is still an opportunity to put in an application to The Smith Family if you wish to do so. Either email me at mel.agustina@decyp.tas.gov.au or collect an application form from the school. We encourage families to apply and take advantage of the wonderful opportunities that The Smith Family can provide students on scholarships.

Parents and Kids Together (PaKT)

Seven students have been lucky enough to join the PaKT opportunity that has been offered at school on Thursday afternoons. These teams of parents and kids are well into developing their projects together. Have a quick glimpse of some of the projects that are under way!

Anthony and his dad, Brendan

Assemblies

We are excited to have different classes at our school lead assemblies this term. These assemblies are organised by the classes and run by students. This provides students with opportunities to share their learning and celebrate success. At each assembly we are giving out Reading Awards for our home reading program, ‘Aussie of the Month’ awards as well as school values awards. Congratulations to Noah P and Kylo for receiving the ‘Aussie of the Month’ for May. Students who received the Respect award at our last assemblies were Addison S, Harshal, Lyla, Brandon Lockley-Graham, Harper, Hayden, Violet, Shaan and Roulette.

‘Is it Bullying?’

To coincide with the release of the new DECYP bullying policy, we are doing mini-lessons with all classes about bullying.

The poster below will be introduced to each class over the next week. Some classes started their work with it last week and teachers will be using the words rude, mean or bullying when referring to language and actions used in conflict.

Rude words are when we say something without really thinking it through and these upset another person. These are words that aren’t very nice and said only once.

Mean refers to words or actions we say to meaningfully upset or hurt another person. This is also a once off occurrence.

Bullying is when words or actions happen over and over again repeatedly to meaningfully hurt others.

Students will engage in a mini-lesson where a bruised apple represents the way bullying hurts others. Although you cannot see that the apple is hurt from the outside, the inside of the apple is bruised and badly hurt, just like our feelings when someone bullies us.

Bullying is taken very seriously at Springfield Gardens Primary School and restorative practices will be in place to support any child who has been subjected to this at school.

We've recently launched a new section on the Department for Education, Children and Young People (DECYP) website – Welcome to your child’s Tasmanian education. The page provides a single location for families with school-aged children to access DECYP information.

The Strategic Marketing, Communication and Media, and Strategic Policy and Projects teams have been working to improve the way families find information that DECYP provides across our multiple online platforms. The new webpage is a first cut at providing a hub on our website focused on information that families would find useful for their child’s education.

Please visit the page and share this with your communities. Attached is an article for your school newsletter and social media page. We'd also appreciate your feedback through a short survey available from the webpage.

Explore the webpage at Welcome to your child's Tasmanian education. You can also find the link on the DECYP website home page.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XYRD3J7

The Department of Health (DoH) and Department for Education, Children and Young People (DECYP) are working together to raise awareness about the dangers of e-cigarettes and vaping, as well as how to find support to quit.