Opening Doors for Learning: classroom environment

Showing posts with label classroom environment. Show all posts

Monday, 9 January 2017

The SELF in self-regulation

For the assignments in my self-regulation course, I've been thinking a lot about the self in self-regulation and how it has to be very individual. What is calming for one person can be aggravating for another. Lots of people find it very relaxing to take a bath but I just get restless. Sitting and soaking in a tub would be stressful for me!

There are many definitions of self-regulation but I am working from the definition that self-regulation is a function of becoming aware of your arousal states and what things you can do to get yourself back to calmly aware and alert. Some teachers and entire schools are adopting mindfulness programs and using visualization exercises to teach children to become calm, alert and ready to learn. But for some of our students those types of exercises may add to stress rather than reduce it. We want to work towards the child becoming aware of their arousal state, identifying their particular stressors and the child determining what strategies help them to self-regulate, not educator implementation of a one-size-fits all program that we do as a class when the noise level is getting too high.

Some people in my course and in my own circle of friends shared the following strategies they use to self-regulate - to either up-regulate or down-regulate and return to a state of calmness.

a warm bath
meditation
deep breaths
going for a walk
going for a run
spending time with a pet
knitting
painting
journaling
sewing
spending time in nature
spending time alone

What works for you? What strategies are appropriate for the classroom setting?

From self-reg.ca

Thursday, 15 December 2016

Self-regulation as Classroom Culture

When I first began teaching kindergarten, I had little teddy bear cut outs at each centre to indicate the number of children who could play there. For example, there were three chairs at the play doh table so there were three bear cut outs and three children could play there. There were four chairs in the house centre so four bears, etc. This is what I had been taught during my ECE training.

And what quickly happened is that I and the children spent our time policing how many children were in each centre. "Miss, there's five people in the house centre. He came last, he has to go!' "But she's had a long turn...." and so on and so on.

So, my ECE partner and I decided to get rid of the teddy bears and get rid of the limits on how many children could play in each centre. And the culture in the room shifted!!!!!! We could focus on engaging with the children in play, and the children learned to determine what the limits were at each centre. Sometimes a child would pull a chair from our make and take centre over to the play doh table and we might have four or five chidlren there. On their own, they decided when there were so many people that the play doh was divided into such small portions that they couldn't really play effectively.

A few years ago I was visiting a kindergarten classroom and the teaching team had introduced a hardware store to the dramatic play centre with predrilled lumber, screwdrivers, screws and other materials. As soon as whole group time on the carpet was done, about twenty students descended on the very small dramatic play centre. We waited and in a few moments .... 6 or 7 students dragged some of the lumber and materials over to the tables to work on them there, about 8 children stayed in the drama centre and continued to explore and the rest wandered off to other centres. They were able to decide if they felt playing in the house centre was worth the stress of negotiating space and materials or if they would rather wait and play there later. All of this happened in mere moments and required no teacher intervention.

The Ontario Kindergarten Program document reminds us that children are capable and competent learners, full of potential and ready to take ownership of their learning. The classroom environment needs to reflect our belief that children are competent and capable. What limits do we really need to have in our classroom and which ones are purely arbitrary?

Here's a great article by Carol Anne Wien about teachers in a preschool centre in Ontario who found that eliminating many rules and reorganizing the physical space reduces accidents, noise, aggressive play and reduced teacher stress. This was originally published in the NAEYC's journal Young Children in January 2004.

Deanna Pecaski McLennan shares a post on her blog about how the Flow of the Day in her kindergarten classroom allows students to deepen their learning through large blocks of time.

Monday, 12 December 2016

Classroom Environments that Promote Self-regulation

As part of the course I'm taking through the MEHRIT centre, we were given the choice on how we wanted to do our latest reflection. Inspired by Susan Hopkins, I created this video to showcase some of the ways that teachers in our board are using the classroom environment to promote students' development of self-regulation. In a nutshell, self-regulation is the ability to monitor your own energy level - are you hyperaroused? hypoaroused? or calm, alert and ready to learn? and then either up regulate or down regulate as needed.

Kindergarten classrooms can be noisy, busy environments but you can see in these photos how educators have created calm, soothing spaces for children. Reducing stress allows students to reach that calm state necessary for learning. I was in a rush when I created this video since our reflection was due that day, so I didn't add the photo credits. I've listed them at the bottom of this blog post.

For more information about self-regulation:

The MEHRIT Centre

Understanding Self-Regulation: Why stressed students struggle to learn

For an example of one of Susan's video blogs:
Is this Self-Reg? 5 Misconceptions about Self-Reg in Schools

My Classroom Environment Reflection video: