STUDENT WELLBEING
When Can Stress Be Helpful?
This Term all classes will be focusing on stress management.
In small amounts, and when kids have the right support, stress can be a positive boost. It can help kids rise to a challenge. It can help them push toward goals, focus their effort, and meet deadlines. This kind of positive stress allows kids to build the inner strengths and skills known as resilience.
When Can Stress Be Harmful?
Stress or adversity that is too intense, serious, long-lasting, or sudden can overwhelm a child’s ability to cope. Stress can be harmful when kids don’t have a break from stress, or when they lack the support or the coping skills they need. Over time, too much stress can affect kids’ mental and physical health. As a parent you can’t prevent your children from feeling stress. But you can help kids and teens cope. You can:
- Help them use positive stress to go for goals, adapt to changes, face challenges, and gain confidence.
- Give extra support and stability when they go through stressful life events.
- Protect them from the harmful effects of too much stress, such as chronic stress and traumatic stress.
What the Stress Management lessons will focus on in each level:
Foundation
Activities will assist students to:
• Recognise and identify their own emotions
• Describe situations that may evoke these emotions
• Recognise and identify how their emotions influence the way they feel and act
• Express their emotions constructively.
Year 1 -2
Activities will assist students to:
• Identify and describe personal coping skills and explain how these contribute to family and school life
• Discuss the ways in which students can use self-calming strategies to manage themselves in stressful situations.
Year 3 and 4
Activities within this topic area will assist students to:
• Describe the influence that people, situations and events have on their emotions
• Explore strategies to manage physical, social and emotional change
• Describe and apply strategies that can be used in situations that make them feel uncomfortable or unsafe
• Explain the value of self-discipline and goal-setting in helping them to learn and to cope with change and challenge
• Describe personal strengths and identify coping strategies that they can apply to help them cope with change and challenge.
Year 5 and 6
Activities will assist students to:
• Identify some causes of stress and strategies that can be used to reduce stress
• Identify and explain factors that influence effective communication in a variety of situations.
Deputy Principal
Wellbeing Leader