Self-Regulation 🫤

“Counting down, 3 deep breathes, closing my eyes - doesn’t work for me”

1) Finger Routes - a possible way to take your mind off a stressful situation or quell building anxiety 🧵 twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2) A weaving wall

Similar to the above, I find myself getting lost in the pattern making! twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

It’s that time of year when it’s lovely to really bond with your class and not many better ways of doing it was some board games.

These are all ‘quick play’ style games that take minimal setup, aiming for max enjoyment! #playistheway This was one of my favourite games growing up - though I was never very good at it.

Behaviour 🧵

Following my tweet yesterday, I had a number of people asking ‘well, what would YOU do to tackle bad behaviour?’

Had a think, below are 20 things that I’ve found to be of use & maybe could apply or adapt for your setting… 1. A welcome in the morning.

My setting ensures that SMT and other staff are in the playground at least 15 minutes before the bell everyday.

The result: every child (and parent/carer) gets a hello.

Upper primary and S1/2 teachers 🙋‍♂️

If you haven’t yet plunged into the world of PLAY, let me shine a tiny light on the power of this pedagogy and try to convince you to give it a go…

This morning, I setup a number of ‘provocations’ for my class today. Here’s what happened 1/8 On the board were the words ‘build a race circuit’ and around the class I setup tables like these with various materials.

No other instructions, I was actually out the room speaking to another member of staff and greeting pupils as they arrived for the day 2/8

How do you structure your reading groups?

This term, with all that’s gone on, I took a bit of a risk: I let my class pick their own group and their own book, regardless of their reading ability.

It’s early days...but I think it’s really paying off. 1/7 I had selected 8 different stories (mostly Oxford reading tree, various levels) with 6 copies of each.

Before being set loose to ‘browse the bookstore’ the class created success criteria from a discussion around how you can choose a ‘good book’ for you. 2/7

Walter Raleigh
Francis Drake
Nelson

Malala

Apparently it seems to some that the first 3 people listed are more appropriate ‘names’ for primary school houses than the girl who survived a taliban gunshot and has championed education since.

1/5 When deciding on famous people to name a school house after, one must accept standards & culture were different in times gone by.

But Walter Raleigh led the massacre of and beheadings of 600 Spanish and Italian men who had surrendered.

A role model for primary kids? 2/5

1/4 I’m coming across more ‘likes’ and ‘retweets’ on my feed of practitioners who advocate zero tolerance approaches to behaviour.

If there is one thing NOT to do after the summer, it’s to apply harmful, blanket behaviour policies to year groups.

Instead, try these: 2/4 Google and read around these subjects:

Trauma Informed Schools
CPAG (CPAG in Scotland too)
1 in 4
Restorative Practice
Social Justice in Schools
EEF Behaviour
Teacher Bias/Implicit Bias
Pivotal Education
ACEs (though, read critically, there’s some misinformation out there)

Discussion in class linked to #InternationalWomensDay2020 left some in the class frustrated.

“I just don’t get why women think they’re hard done by” stuck out.

So today, I gave a mini presentation to the class after lunch. I began by asking: What do you see here? Not one person realised the King was above the queen. When pointed out, nearly all had an ‘ooooh’ moment.

Then asked what the reaction would be if Megan Rapinoe celebrated like this:

Please #edutwitter read below.

I ran a poll about Stormzy. Was partly a reaction to the two days worth of near constant trolling from @Miss_Snuffy

Katharine, we’ve never seen eye to eye, that doesn’t mean there are parts of your practice I don’t admire.

However... (Just quickly before I comment on Grime, I realise I’m white and grew up around Dundee 😂 However, my two year Friday night residency playing hip hop, dancehall and afrojamz gives me a slight anecdotal insight into this debate that you lack imo (yes, the wee guy is me!))