Wellbeing News 2024

Week 7: RRRR Topic 1: Emotional Literacy

Emotional literacy can be defined as the ability to understand ourselves and other people. It includes the ability to understand, express and manage our own emotions, build empathy, and to respond appropriately to the emotions of others. Building a large vocabulary for emotions helps to increase emotional literacy and build self-awareness and empathy for others.

This is an example of an activity at the Foundation Level.

What do emotions look like?

Learning intention

Students recognise and name some commonly experienced emotions
Students identify what the emotions look like through facial and body expressions

Method

1 Bring the class together for a mat session. Explain that while you read this story, you want them to notice all the different feelings or emotions that the characters are experiencing. For example, if a character is sad, or if a character is angry.

2 Read the story that illustrates different emotions – through the story line and the illustrations. As you read each page, ask:

Can you guess the emotion that this person is demonstrating?
How did you guess? What are the signs that tell us what they are feeling? (Elicit comments about facial expressions or other body language.)

Sum up by naming all the different emotions that the students found in the story.

3 Explain that it is a very good thing to know the names of lots of different emotions. This can help us explain to other people how we are feeling. It can help us to understand ourselves. Sometimes we need to be able to tell other people how we feel.

Review

What new emotion words did you learn today? Did we identify how emotions can be seen in people’s facial expressions and other body language? What are some examples of this?

The following is an activity in topic 1 aimed at the Year 5 or 6 level.

Recognising positive, negative and mixed emotions

Learning intention

Students review a vocabulary that can be used to describe a range of positive and negative emotions
Students identify triggering events or situations that can lead to particular emotional responses
Students investigate the notion of mixed emotions or emotional complexity

1. Explain to children- In any one day we can experience multiple and complex emotions. Emotions are triggered by events/situations and also by what we think about what is happening to us. We may experience strong or mild emotions, and a mix of positive and negative or comfortable and uncomfortable emotions. We are going to think and talk about these emotional highs and lows with a focus on understanding ourselves and others better. We are going to use many ‘emotions’ words. The more words we have for describing emotions, the better we are at communicating our feelings, seeking help when we need it, and helping others.

2. Write the headings ‘positive/comfortable emotions’ on one side of the board and ‘negative/uncomfortable emotions’ on the other.

Ask the class to brainstorm some examples of positive emotions and some examples of negative emotions.

Discuss:

What do positive emotions tend to look like when we see them in others? Sound like? Feel like?
What do some of these negative emotions look like? Sound like? Feel like? (Invite some students to demonstrate.)

Explain there are times when we can feel mixed emotions, or both positive and negative emotions at the same time. For example, you might be excited about competing in the cross-country finals, but also nervous about whether you will do well.

Distribute the Emotions handout and ask the students to put a cross next to the ‘negative’ emotions and a tick next to those that are ‘positive’. Compare lists during class feedback.

Then ask students to work with a partner or trio to provide some examples of when:

someone could experience positive emotions
someone could experience negative emotions
someone could experience mixed emotions, or both positive and negative emotions at once.

Students can use the emotions list on the top part of the handout to help them. Ask each group to share one of their examples with the class.

Week 6: Fears and worries

It's normal for children to feel afraid at times. Fear is an emotion that can help kids be cautious. Things that are new, big, loud, or different can seem scary at first. Parents and teachers can help kids feel safe and learn to feel at ease.

So how do we help kids start feeling braver? The key is an invisible skill called self regulation. Self-regulating is essentially the ability to process and manage our own emotions and behaviors in a healthy way. It’s what gives us the ability to talk ourselves down or to feel things without acting on them. Most grown-ups practice self-regulation without a second thought. Think of feeling a moment of fear before reassuring yourself that there’s really nothing scary about a dark room. But for kids, building self-regulation takes time, practice and space to learn — which means parents have to get comfortable with letting kids be a little uncomfortable as they figure things out. This can be challenging.

Remember:

It takes time and practice for children to learn new coping skills.
Young children usually learn best when you do it with them.
Older children may be able to use coping skills but still need support when scared.
Children feel secure and confident when they have regular quality time with parents and carers.
Bedtime is often when fears can surface. Try to have some calming time before bed to unwind and develop a bedtime routine.

Help children identify what is happening in their bodies when they experience strong feelings like fear, for example some children say they have a pain in the tummy. Help them understand that their thinking ( I’m scared of the dark), leads to strong feelings ( in this case fear) which then influences what happens in the body, (such as the way they breath or things like pains in the tummy). These things then impact what actions the child can take, such as settling down to sleep.

Fears and worries

Difficulty	Ideas on how to support your child
Feels scared and worried	Acknowledge the feeling - ‘You’re having trouble going off to sleep because you are worried something might happen.
Feels unsafe	Reassure - That storm was only on TV it is not going to happen here.
Can’t think through logically	What are the facts - that can’t happen where we live.
Feels overwhelmed by a scary thought	Label it. Eg. That’s just a scary thought. You don't have to keep it.
Doesn’t feel confident about managing fears	Encourage helpful thinking and self talk. Eg Tell those scary thoughts I know I am safe so go away. OR I know it is new but I can try my best and I know who to ask for help.
May not believe in own ability to manage fears	Praise and encouragement eg You did it ! You are trying really hard to be brave. Well done!

Week 5: Gratitude

Wellbeing of all, is at the heart of Catholic Education. Enabling a learning environment which provides for the spiritual, physical, emotional, cognitive and social wellbeing of its participants. It is especially important to ensure that children and young people’s wellbeing is looked after in times of uncertainty and stress. Supporting wellbeing not only helps children and young people to feel happier and less anxious, it will also help them to have positive interactions with the rest of the family and to learn more effectively.

Some parents or carers may choose to do wellbeing activities with their child or even with the whole family. Activities that support wellbeing are beneficial for people of all ages and can provide a great opportunity for family members to bond and experience positive emotions together. One activity is practising gratitude. It may be something you have done before but it may be something that has dropped off in the business of life. You may like to give this a go with your family.

Gratitude

It is always important, especially in difficult times, to appreciate the things that we may take for granted – like having a place to live, food, clean water, friends, family, even access to technology. Gratitude is pausing to notice and appreciate these things. It’s taking a moment to reflect on how fortunate we are when something good happens — whether it’s a small thing or a big thing. Did you know that practising gratitude for 21 days in a row can re–train the brain to look for positives in the world instead of negatives? By simply being grateful, children and young people can experience a greater sense of optimism, happiness and calm.

Gratitude Questions to use with your children:

What was the best thing that happened to me today?
Who am I most grateful for today and why?
What am I looking forward to most about tomorrow?

Week 4: The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships

Learning materials have been designed for teachers to use in the curriculum in primary and secondary schools to develop students’ social, emotional and positive relationship skills. Efforts to promote social and emotional skills and positive gender norms in children and young people have been shown to improve health related outcomes and wellbeing.

As well as teaching academic skills, it is part of the core business of schools to promote student resilience, wellbeing and positive social attitudes. One way that schools can achieve this is through the teaching of evidence based programs that explicitly foster personal and social capabilities.

Explicit efforts to provide Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) opportunities is recognised as a key part of this work.

SEL is the process through which children and young people build and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to:

Understand and manage emotions
Set and achieve positive goals
Feel and express empathy
Establish and maintain positive relationships
Make responsible decisions
Develop resilience to deal with change
Create positive gender norms
Contribute to social cohesion.

Social and emotional skills help students develop the resilience to deal with change, challenge and unpredictability.

Social and emotional skills are also the foundation of positive relationships, including positive gender relationships, and contribute to social cohesion.

Efforts to promote personal and social capabilities and build resilience can be fostered through a whole school approach. A key component of a whole school approach is the promotion of positive teacher-student relationships. Positive relationships are significantly associated with increased ‘school connectedness’ and with cognitive, emotional and behavioural engagement.

The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships (RRRR) learning materials cover eight topics of Social and Emotional Learning across all levels of primary and secondary education.

These topics will be shared with you over the coming weeks so you can partner with us in supporting your child in their learning.

2024 Wellbeing Team at St Joseph’s

The wellbeing team at St. Joseph's is led by Maryanne Evans and Liz Noonan. The wellbeing team is available over each day. In this complex and busy world we live in, the needs of students have developed over time and being able to support them through our Wellbeing team is very important. Students can seek support for themselves or they can be referred by their teacher or a parent can contact the team directly or via email.

Typically, students seek support for friendship, personal or social situations. The support can be in small group or individual, one to one meetings or pastoral chats.

Maryanne Evans

Maryanne has been working in wellbeing for the past 10 years following a 20 year career in nursing and a move to education in 2006 led to working at St. Joe’s as a classroom teacher for over 12 years. She has completed a Masters in Student Wellbeing and has studied counselling and Clinical Pastoral Care education. She brings enthusiasm and passion and a genuine interest in the wellbeing of children and families. She has raised a family of three and enjoys her 6 grandchildren.

Maryanne Evans email: mevans@sjwarrnambool.catholic.edu.au

Liz Noonan

Liz has been in teaching for 25 years 15 years of this time at St Joseph’s, teaching across all year levels. She has a particular interest in the wellbeing of students and is very excited to be involved in this area. Liz has had substantial experience working with students in all year levels. She has a passion for the wellbeing of students and looks forward to working with students and their families. Liz is looking forward to further developing her knowledge in these area by completing more study this year. She comes from a large family base, having 4 sisters who all have children. She has 3 adult children.

Liz Noonan email: lnoonan@sjwarrnambool.catholic.edu.au

CatholicCare

Our partnership with CatholicCare will support parents and caregivers. Helen Diamond is located at the Warrnambool Office, 142 Timor Street. Phone 5559 3000.