PBL & Social-Emotional Learning

 

The focus for the fortnight is:

Be a Friend – We respect everyone’s personal space bubbles.

Knowing how close or far away to stand from other people is one of our many social skills. For most of us, we don’t have to think about this, we just know. For some children, this may not happen naturally and they may require support to understand how far or close to stand to someone and why this is important.

Personal body space is the imaginary ‘space bubble’ that surrounds our bodies. We like to keep this area to ourselves most of the time. If people enter our personal body space we might feel uncomfortable and move away from the person. The complexity of personal body space deepens when we explore different relationships in our lives.

The space bubble is smaller with our immediate family, meaning that we can stand closer to them and feel safe and comfortable. With strangers and people we don’t see as often we need to stand further away. Other factors are also important, including age, gender, culture and emotions.

We don’t just have personal space around our bodies, we may have it on other spaces too. An imaginary zone forms around our desk space, table space at dinner and around us while we are on public transport. When someone invades our personal body space they become a ‘space invader’. If this person is a stranger, we may even feel scared as well as uncomfortable.

When teaching personal body space rules to children we can use our arms to show the distance you stand from someone. A fully outstretched arm represents the distance between people in your outer circles and the distance between the end of your hand and your elbow can represent the distance you can stand with people in your inner circle. This can be modelled by placing your elbow on your hip and reaching your arm towards the person. We can also tune children into other people’s body language when the child is too close and the person feels uncomfortable. Looking at spaces between characters in books and on television can also be useful. If your child participates in pretend play you can demonstrate personal space using characters and toys.

BridgeBuilders

Make an Agreement

Children may have conflict with others who want different things to them, or have different perceptions, personalities, cultures and expertise etc. Being able to make agreements and solve problems with diverse people builds innovation and creativity, encourages broader thinking and perceptions, and leads to better decision making and confidence in problem solving.

Make an agreement teaches problem-solving strategies and helps children to be less of a victim of conflict and more of a victor. Many children just focus on what they want in a problem and see only their side. Teaching them to make an agreement encourages them to stop and try to see the problem from the other side, and then try to brainstorm ideas of win-win options. When you teach children how to make an agreement you could be investing powerful skills into the leaders of tomorrow!

Peer Mediators

Congratulations to our BridgeBuilders who have been continuing their duties in the playground as peer mediators for our younger students. Please see below for those who have earned their first certificate. Bronze certificates will be handed out on assembly in week 6. 

Walking Wheeling Wednesday’s 

Wednesdays at Craigslea, are Walking Wheeling Wednesdays! Each Wednesday, classes are surveyed on how students travelled to school. The class with the highest percentage of active travellers are acknowledge with our AST Star Trophy and the use of our sports/games box for the week. So far this term 5C have been the weekly winners – that’s five weeks in a row! A new record for the school – well done!

5C are also on track to be our Golden Boot Trophy winners for April/May. For a class to be the recipient of the Golden Boot Trophy and afternoon game with one of the leadership team members, they will need to be the class that has over the month, had the highest percentage for actively travelling to school by a certain mode. For May this will be the highest % of walkers (if you park and stride this will be included in this count) with two more Wednesdays left in May, how will you actively travel to school?

Check out how your class is going with actively traveling to school:

Key Dates for 2024 Prep