I. General Information
School Name: Tsuma-as Elementary School
School District: SD#70 Pacific Rim
Inquiry Team Members: Keira Gaucher: kgaucher@sd70.bc.ca, Kelly Shannon: kshannon@sd70.bc.ca, Haellie Kynoch: hkynoch@sd70.bc.ca
Inquiry Team Contact Email: kgaucher@sd70.bc.ca
II. Inquiry Project Information
Type of Inquiry: NOIIE Case Study
Grade Levels Addressed Through Inquiry: Primary (K-3)
Curricular Areas Addressed: Not applicable
Focus Addressed: Self-regulation
In one sentence, what was your focus for the year? Our inquiry focused on creating a learning environment that supported students’ emotional regulation, allowing them to feel safe and the opportunity to work through their emotions in a safe and controlled environment.
III. Spirals of Inquiry Details
Scanning: Early in the year, we noticed many of our students were seeking opportunities for co-regulation, regulation and sensory input/output in undesirable ways. Through trial and error, we discovered many different avenues for regulation that worked for our two classrooms, allowing our students many opportunities throughout the day to move their bodies in ways that were safe and supervised.
We used the two key questions to guide our scanning process by recognizing that most, if not all, of our students felt safe and cared for when they were with us. We also realized that our students were eager to share their learning when they felt comfortable to do so, usually in a quiet, one-to-one space.
When looking at the First Peoples Principles of Learning, we began by focusing on the following two principles: learning supports well-being and holistic, reflexive and relational learning. These two ideas allowed us to focus in on what our students may need to be successful in the classroom, how we could best support their emotional well-being, and how to merge the two ideas of emotional regulation and academic success.
Focus: We chose to focus on self-regulation because we had two groups of kindergarten learners that needed extra support to be successful within the school community. We were noticing elevated emotions, escalating and unsafe behaviours, and continuously needing to revisit and rework our strategies to help co-regulate both the individual students, as well as our classes as a whole. It was our hope that by introducing concrete and consistent regulation areas and methods, our students would soon learn how and where they could safely regulate their bodies within the classroom.
Hunch: Our hunch was that our current approach to teaching needed to change given our learners’ inability to focus for long stretches of time. We also realized that we needed to break up our instructional time with both movement and sensory breaks. We began trialing different approaches – frequent movement breaks, sensory tools, teaching through sensory input and output activities, etc.
New Professional Learning: Our own professional learning throughout this inquiry project included the following opportunities and collaboration:
– self-directed professional development surrounding the use of new regulation tools within the classroom
– collaboration and conversations with our district occupational therapist
– visits from our district OT to learn how to better support our students within the classroom
– implementing pre-existing regulation and sensory supports, either from the school or personal experience
– conversations and observational visits from the district behaviour support team
– school-based team meetings and semi-regular team meetings (designated students) to discuss how to best support students with higher needs
We found the implementation of resources from our district OT and ongoing conversations/self directed pro-d to be the most helpful throughout this inquiry project, as we were in constant flux finding what worked best for our students as they grew this year.
Taking Action: Implementing our various self-regulation tools within the classroom took time, allowing for exploration from students and teaching how to remain safe. We were able to successfully achieve this by slowly introducing new tools, learning opportunities, and whole class regulation breaks to ensure that students felt comfortable with the options provided. Some of our most used tools include our cozy cubes, fidgets, sensory peapod, mirrors for emotion check in, and weighted animals.
Together as a team, we chose to create listening stations for our classrooms, with the intended purpose to be both a regulation tool (mindfulness stories, classical music, etc.), as well as a learning opportunity.
Checking: Looking at our learners as we end the school year, they have made tremendous progress in how they manage their emotions and control their bodies within the school setting. By setting clear expectations and boundaries in our own classroom, and taking the time to introduce each tool slowly, our students have learned the appropriate times and places to use these tools. We feel confident sending our students into the next grade, knowing they have a toolbox at their disposal – with room to add and grow as they get older.
Reflections/Advice: As educators, we are committed to the continued implementation or regulation tools within our classroom setting to support learning in the best way we know how. We will continue to adapt as our learners change and grow, ensuring they are being provided the best opportunities to remain in the classroom with us. We will continue to monitor any new research or information that will help to support our practice moving forward – committing to changing or adapting our model as suggested.
Moving forward, we are looking at moving our inquiry focus to outdoor learning, where we can support our kindergarten learners to explore their immediate environment, tell stories, learn to collaborate, and move their bodies as they learn.