On Friday Week 4, the UPS Wellbeing Team, along with the UPS Education & Wellbeing Committee, hosted our first Coffee Morning for 2023, with a focus on Wellbeing at Unley Primary.
At the session, Danni Giro, our UPS Wellbeing Leader, introduced our Wellbeing Team – consisting of herself, Denby as Pastoral Care Worker and Tenille as a Student Support Officer working much of her time in the Wellbeing area. Danni also talked to families about the Regulation Room, which is a room dedicated to assisting children who are feeling dysregulated to feel calmer. If your child hasn’t talked to you yet about the Regulation Room, please ask them about it, as it has been a very well-received and popular room amongst our students and we feel so fortunate to have the space, and expertise available at UPS to be able to provide this room to our children. This space is open every morning from 8:45 and after recess and lunch.
Danni, Tenille and the Student Wellbeing Leaders also presented to families on some of the key wellbeing concepts being taught to children at UPS. A copy of the presentation is available via the link below. We encourage you to read through it and get in contact with us if you have any questions, or if you would like any further information.
Two key topics covered in the session were about the language the school uses in relation to the Zones of Regulation and the Flip Your Lid concept:
Zones of Regulation
At Unley Primary School every child learns about The Zones of Regulation language, and it is used to assist students in identifying which emotional “zone” they are in. As you can see below there are four key zones. The aim is to incorporate the Zones into everyday language, so our children are able to say “I feel like I’m in the yellow zone…I’m frustrated” to enable co-regulation between the child and the adult. We encourage families to print a copy of the Zones and keep them somewhere visible at home to help “normalise” this language at home.
Flip Your Lid
We’ve all had that feeling! Nothing is going to plan our emotions are bubbling and we can’t take any more….. we are about to flip our lid! These big emotions are natural and as adults we have developed skills to notice our early warning signs and developed strategies that we can put into place to regulate (most of the time). At UPS the teachers educate students that these emotions are natural and that our brains are reacting to the situation we are in. Children learn that when they feel dysregulated their amygdala “takes over” not allowing our prefrontal cortex to think clearly and process the situation calmly. Students at UPS are learning that it is natural to have “big feelings”. Each year they also begin to create or build upon their toolkit of strategies to use when feeling dysregulated.
Dr Dan Siegel explains how children flip their lid in a child friendly way and that using this concept can be a very powerful way to help children understand how their brain works when they are feeling like they are. Please see the link below for more information about flipping your lid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0T_2NNoC68
Thank you to all the families that joined us for a coffee and participated in the wellbeing session. Our next Coffee Morning will have an education focus, so please stay tuned for those details.
We hope to see you at the next Wellbeing event!
UPS Education & Wellbeing Committee