Curriculum- Teaching and Learning

School Wide Teaching and Learning

In each edition of our school newsletter, we share with our community an insight into the curriculum being taught within our classrooms. This reflects our school's strong focus upon continuous improvement. 

Each edition covers a different area of the curriculum, and is supported by our school-wide approaches to teaching and learning. 

In this edition we focus upon Inquiry across each year level, and again bring to your attention the importance of supporting our school's SWPBL approach. 

The Child Concept of Personal Space and Bubbles

All too often in primary schools across Australia we see children who are unaware of the importance of respecting the "personal bubble" of those around them. It may be an innocent entry into another person's bubble (such as accidentally bumping into them in the playground) or it could be something more deliberate. 

It is important to remember that both words and actions can pop another person's bubble. And all too often, when a bubble pops it doesn't just pop... it explodes! When we say 'explode' we mean that the bubble feels like it can't be put back together, and this can look like tears, yelling, lashing out, or a tantrum. 

When a personal bubble is popped it causes our amygdala to engage, and take over our sensory brain. When we speak with our students about the function of the amygdala, we refer to it as our own personal "fire siren". When our personal fire sirens go-off they sound the alarm of fight, flight, freeze- over and over and over; which is known as the F3 response. 

This fire siren is our body's automatic (and sometimes primitive), built-in system designed to protect us from threat or danger.

With the return from Remote Learning, as we begin to interact with others again, our school is explicitly engaging in lessons which teach our students about the F3 response, self-regulation, and what we call "lid-flipping".  

Over the coming weeks, if your child comes home to talk to you about what they are learning and their own self-regulation methods, we encourage you to listen... as adults we can certainly learn a thing or two about how we manage our own fire sirens. 

What's the Curriculum focus coming up in the next edition of the newsletter?

In the next edition of our newsletter, we will be sharing information with you from the Berry Street Education Model Curriculum.