Assistant Principal's Report
Georgia Despotellis
We’ve already crossed the halfway mark of Term 1 and our Open Afternoons are now underway. This week, our Year 2 students opened the series by proudly sharing their learning with their families. We look forward to seeing many parents join us for the upcoming sessions, with our Prep students hosting on Monday and the Year 4s on Thursday afternoon.
Wellbeing – Self-Regulation
Self-regulation is the ability to manage one’s behaviour and their reactions to feelings and things happening around them.
It includes the ability to:
- Control behaviour associated with strong emotions, such as anger, excitement, frustration, etc
- Calm down
- Focus on tasks
- Control impulses
- Exhibit behaviours that assist in building positive relationships
Self-regulation is important as it helps children to:
- Learn at school
- Behave in socially acceptable ways
- Make friends and keep them
- Become more independent
Some practical ways to help your child learn and practise self-regulation include:
- Work on your child’s skills to understand and manage emotions (the use of books is a great way to teach about emotions)
- Use calming down strategies, e.g. try these five steps:
- notice the emotion
- name the emotion
- pause
- support your child while they calm down
- address the issue
- Plan for challenging situations and provide strategies
- Praise your child when they show self-regulation, e.g. I liked the way you waited for your turn
- Model self-regulation
At our school, we use the Zones of Regulation as our approach to support the development of self-regulation in children. All the different ways children feel are categorised into four coloured zones.
The Four Zones are:
Blue Zone – sad, bored, tired, sick (low state of alertness and down feelings)
Green Zone – happy, calm, proud, focussed (a calm state)
Yellow Zone – worried, stressed, excited, frustrated (elevated emotions)
Red Zone – overexcited, panicked, angry, terrified (intense emotions)
Georgia Despotellis
Assistant Principal