Tuesday, September 19, 2023

50 Calmdown Techniques


 

 From:

https://messymotherhood.com/50-calm-down-tips-for-parents/?fbclid=IwAR0tYGZgednv6Rz_-hK_W-p9jxBFeAtoIX7rtFGRD159Tb-RMSQKKkvUUGs 


Sunday, September 17, 2023

Self-Regulation Strategies for Transitions: Edutopia

 From:https://www.edutopia.org/article/help-young-students-transition?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=BTS23&utm_id=BTS23&utm_term=back+to+school&utm_content=self+regulation&fbclid=IwAR1WT7MQhOmNgjBES6sAxpgIB5we_aTUaCKCGnSBdQ7UxWH6YRX_BZ0xK5w

 

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

Self-Regulation Strategies for Transitions

To help young students learn to manage transitions between activities, consider these simple whole class exercises.

September 12, 2023
Photo of elementary classroom stretching
vgajic / iStock

In my 15 years as a practicing school-based occupational therapist and evaluator, one of the main areas of concern I’ve identified within the academic setting centers around transitions, specifically with preschool and elementary school populations. The new school year is a big transition, so it’s important to give students supports to help them manage both big and small changes.

Consistently leading all students in the exercises and using the tools I offer below before transitioning out of the classroom or between activities should help to decrease and prevent related difficulties. 

For students experiencing high levels of emotionality, transitioning can be a very difficult task. Having to exit a familiar environment, stop a preferred or familiar task, and leave that consistency can feel frightening. Providing the strategies outlined below at all transitions creates a calming routine, which is regulating, while the exercises are designed to keep students out of a fight-or-flight mode. 

SMOOTHING TRANSITIONS

Students who seem to be experiencing low energy, high energy, or strong emotions during transitions can benefit from the following suggested strategies: 

  • Consider creating a visual of the supports outlined below. Visuals can include images of students themselves modeling the strategies.
  • The strategies can be completed before transitions and as the class is transitioning in order to keep students regulated throughout the transitioning process.
  • Keep a visual of these supports by the wall next to the classroom entrance door, so that students can bring them into the class to remind them of the exercise sequences that they can utilize during the transition process to prevent dysregulation. 
  • One tip before having your class begin a transition after a class with high levels of physical stimulation would be to have them take a collective bubble breath or deep breath.
  • It may be beneficial to engage students in an interactive and motivating game before and during transitions, such as I Spy or the Name Game.
  • Consider adding the classroom job of transition leader within your classroom, providing leadership roles to your students relating to regulation. If there’s a student who consistently struggles with transitions from a physical or emotional standpoint, think about offering them the task of transition leader, teaching them how to model functional transition skills for their peers (and thus, for themselves as well). If necessary, you can pair them with a classmate to assist them in completing or modeling these strategies for the class. 

SMALL MOVEMENT EXERCISE 

Stretch and bend: Directions for students: Begin in a standing position. Straighten your legs all the way up to your hips until they feel nice and tight. Use your right arm to help you bend your left knee toward your shoulder, and hold this position for five seconds. Come back to a standing position. Use your left arm to help you bend your right knee toward your shoulder and hold for five seconds. 

This is a nice activity to do before transitioning, as the balancing component provides vestibular input, decreasing fight-or-flight from an emotional and physical perspective. Focusing on the balancing component can also act as a distraction from the transition itself, thus adding a further emotional component.

BIG BODY BREAK 

Walk and squeeze the whole body: This large movement exercise is especially helpful in relation to focus/sustained attention while participating in a motivational game. Students are grounded while keeping hands on their hips as they listen for the direction to freeze, thus addressing attentional skills. Making the body into a tight muscle incorporates proprioception, decreasing fight-or-flight from an emotional or physical perspective, while also waking up the body if there’s low energy. 

Directions for students: Start in the Mountain Pose. Move your hands to rest on your hips. When your teacher or movement leader says “Freeze,” freeze your body and make your entire body into a muscle—squeezing all your muscles in your body until you feel them shake. Once you hear your teacher say “Relax,” release the muscles and place your hands back on your hips. 

TOOLS 

Sunglasses and/or a hat: Wearing sunglasses indoors can help reduce glare from bright lighting and make classes and spaces that feel overwhelming more manageable. Wearing a hat with a brim, such as a baseball hat, blocks out part of the visuals in the environment and can make students’ space feel calmer. It also can provide deep pressure to the head. Decreasing the more noxious visuals within the environment can decrease the fight-or-flight response from an emotional and physical perspective. If the hat is fitted (but not too fitted), it provides a calming compression around the head, thus also decreasing fight-or-flight reaction from those perspectives.

Directions for students: Are you bothered by bright lights or by seeing too many people or things nearby? Wearing a hat with a brim (e.g., a baseball hat) can help by blocking what you see. Make sure that it’s fitted (but not too tight). This can also make your body relax when there are too many things to see and hear by telling your body where it is. Wearing sunglasses can make bright lights less bright (think of those fluorescent bulbs), both inside and outside. This can be especially helpful when going from one place to another and there’s a lot of noise around you. 

Being consistent with having students do these exercises and use the above tools before transitioning should help to decrease and even avert related issues.


 

The Role of Emotion Co-Regulation in Discipline: Edutopia

 From: https://www.edutopia.org/article/role-emotion-co-regulation-discipline?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=BTS23&utm_id=BTS23&utm_term=back+to+school&utm_content=emotion+co-regulation&fbclid=IwAR2hd7djY5tsFs1rmYkeC2bZD-k-vpvqOqgM0hSL1B5qp0xbyYlqPVN6yDU

 

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

The Role of Emotion Co-Regulation in Discipline

Helping students regain their calm after misbehavior doesn’t mean there are no consequences—it ensures that the right lesson is learned.

October 15, 2019
Teacher bending over talking to elementary student
Jim West / Alamy Stock Photo

Our schools are currently seeing a dramatic increase in students of all ages carrying in anxiety, adversity, and trauma from a variety of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Social and emotional learning programs are critical for addressing these emotional and mental challenges, but we must also rethink our discipline procedures and policies. We need to understand that traditional discipline works best with the children who need it the least, and works least with the children who need it the most. Discipline ideally is not something we do to students—it should be a quality we want to develop within them.

For students with ACEs, traditional punishments can unintentionally retraumatize and reactivate their stress response systems. Recent research in school discipline is grounded in the neuroscience of attachment, which emphasizes the significance of relationships. Those relationships begin with an adult in a regulated, calm brain state. It takes a calm brain to calm another brain—this co-regulation is something that students with ACEs may have missed out on. Their school can be an environment where they feel safe and connected even when they make poor choices.

This doesn’t mean giving students a pass for misbehavior: There are still consequences for poor choices, but regulating the feelings and sensations a student is experiencing is the initial step, one that is critical for a sustainable change in behavior.

Emotions are contagious, and when a teacher is able to model a calm presence through their tone, facial expression, and posture, students are less likely to react defensively. When the teacher listens to what is beneath the behavior, focusing on the student’s feelings, this type of validation says to the child that the teacher sees them and is trying to understand. When the teacher takes deep breaths, gets a drink of water, and creates space for reflection for a minute or two, they are modeling the regulation skills they want to see from students.

CO-REGULATING BEHAVIOR WITH STUDENTS

If I’m the teacher, co-regulation—the process of helping a student who has made a poor choice of behavior to regain their composure—begins with the awareness of my own sensations and feelings when I am disciplining the student. It entails a willingness to regulate my own brain before I act on that discipline. Personally, I try to commit to three quick routines that feel doable to calm me in a short period of time: taking three deep breaths, texting a friend or pulling an affirmation from a prepared jar, and stretching and moving for a minute.

It’s much better to wait for a few minutes when we’re feeling irritated and angry before we discipline, and this is also excellent modeling for students. Students read our nonverbal communication, so paying attention to our facial expression and posture in addition to our tone of voice is critical when teaching the behaviors we want to see.

Focusing on the student’s sensations and the feelings that lie beneath the behavior help us to understand the root causes and patterns of a behavior we might discover when there is rising irritation and anger. I may have a minute or two to redirect—by suggesting that the student go and get a drink of water or take a couple of deep breaths to calm down with me before we talk about the problem.

Creating a friend-in-need system could be helpful so each student has a buddy or even another adult in the building to go to when they begin to feel agitated. For the friend-in-need system, teachers ask students to select one or two peers or adults at the school who they trust and feel comfortable with if they need to take a break and be in another environment or talk through those challenging moments. This is preventative discipline and a way for students to have options when they begin to feel negative. These calming strategies are taught ahead of time and become a part of our procedures and classroom agreements or guidelines.

Validation is powerful way to calm an agitated and angry student. It’s calming to be understood and felt by another. Some things you can say to help a student feel validated:

  • “That must feel awful.”
  • “You seem really angry.”
  • “You seem really frustrated.”
  • “What a difficult situation you’re in.”

Validation opens the door for teacher and student to discuss choices and consequences and to create a plan of action for the next time there’s a conflict.

I once heard that it is critical that a teacher’s brain should resemble a thermostat rather than a thermometer when it comes to disciplining a student. What does this mean? Like a thermostat, the teacher needs to maintain a steady temperature throughout a moment of conflict, with a goal of creating conversation and a plan of action with a student who understands their choices and the consequences of those actions. The teacher needs to model the behaviors they want to see and to model self-care and respect during the discipline process.

SHARE THIS STORY

  • email icon

FILED UNDER

 

Thursday, September 7, 2023