Focus

To help students match the size of their reaction to the size of the problem

Action

During the fall of 2021, we continued to intervene with our students who were struggling to independently solve problems for themselves.  Unlike previous years, the number of students identified in this group seemed to increase exponentially.  We attributed this increase to the pandemic and the fact that many of our youngest learners had had some abridged version of school / preschool, or had not been to school at all, prior to their arrival in September.

The Feature Image associated with this post has been included in our student handbooks / agendas, for the last two years.  It is the tool that we use to talk with students and their parents about this issue.  Like most of these kinds of tools, they work much better when the child is calm, used for instruction at a time when this kind of information can be learned.  At times of dysregulation,  our hope is that they have seen the graphic enough times that it helps connect with that information and helps the child to regulate.

To this end, our staff (K-7) take time to explain the graphic, using every day examples with students.  We find this graphic to also be very useful with our older students who may also blow things out of proportion.  With our students who really struggle with matching the size of the reaction to the size of the problem, we also provide this graphic to parents, so they can use it at home, so that children are getting the same message in both settings.  In addition, some children within this same group have been supported by our school counsellor, usually in a small group setting to do some additional work (viewing scenarios from Social Express), and using real-life situations.