Wellbeing & Engagement

2024 Occupational Therapy 

Early Years Project 

This year our reception teachers have been involved in a project working with a Senior Occupational Therapists from Student Support Services. The project has also involved other nearby schools and preschools. 

The project's aim is to help educators build skills in helping children to regulate (manage their thoughts, behaviours, emotions, and level of energy, so that it matches the activity that students are engaged in). 

Different approaches will help children to do this such as: 

• having schools that are predictable (e.g routines, knowing where to find things) 
• considering the sensory elements of the school (e.g. is it noisy? Is there lots of things on the wall?) 
• helping children learn about emotions
• understanding how to support children's energy levels (e.g encouraging children to have a movement break or being still in a soothing space if their bodies need it) 

Over the course of the year, our reception teachers have had the opportunity to attend professional learning workshops led by Kate Hubl and Belinda Jankowiak who are Senior Occupational Therapists at Student Support Services; the workshops also included educators from nearby schools and preschools. The workshops provided targeted professional learning in a range of areas including regulation and sensory processing. 

Underpinned by the professional learning, our reception team in consultation with Belinda chose an area of focus to implement across the 3 reception classrooms. The reception team chose to focus on developing a series of lessons that they could share with reception students that focus on identifying the different parts of the brain including the: Amygdala, Prefrontal Cortex, and Hippocampus. 

The lessons also included opportunities for reception students to learn about Dr. Dan Siegel's Hand Model of the Brain in an age-appropriate way. 

Reception teachers used the guard dog (depicts the amygdala) and the wise owl (depicts the prefrontal cortex) puppets to support them in teaching their students about the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex including what their respective roles are and how they interrelate. 

The project has also enabled our reception teachers to choose a group of reception students to track, so that we can measure the impact of the Occupational Therapy Project. 

The reception team are excited to continue to work with Belinda this term and in term 4 in this exciting space. We can't wait to see what happens next! 

Watch this space! 

Nagaityalya

Nik