Berry Street Education Model in action

We recently asked schools to share their success stories in using BSEM strategies. We are excited to share these stories here.

Circles

It’s always good to start the day with a circle; a great way to check in and out, frame expectations for the day or session and nurture meaningful relationships within the community.

Denna Tye, teacher, explained, “At Naradhan Public School (NSW), we have implemented morning and afternoon circles to build on our predictable routines. It allows us to set the tone for the day, highlighting positives we’ve seen in the playground and then finish the day, by giving everyone the opportunity to reflect and share something they’ve enjoyed.”

Stories of Impact – Rhythm, Culture and Community Wellbeing at School

Lamine Sonko is known as Australia’s African cultural journeyman. He has toured Australia and internationally as a performer and educator, engaging and energising audiences across the country, and bringing people together to celebrate diversity and enable creative collective action.

BSEM draws on evidence to advocate for the use of patterned, rhythmic physical movement activities to support students’ healing, growth and learning at school. In this interview, Lamine reflects on using rhythm and culture to engage young people, facilitate community and improve wellbeing.

Positive priming pics ‘n tricks using curiosity and creativity

When people experience positive emotions, their minds broaden and they open up to new possibilities and ideas. At the same time, positive emotions help people build their personal well-being resources, ranging from physical resources, to intellectual resources, and social resources (Fredrickson 2009).

Optimising your decision-making energy

Self-regulation

Self-regulation can be defined as the ability to control your behaviour, emotions and thoughts, and specifically, to be able to manage disruptive emotions and impulses (Bandura, 1991). In times like these, it becomes even more important to be building self-regulation skills in ourselves and our young people.

Building Stamina in At-home Learning

Are you looking for ways to help children maintain focus on their schoolwork at home? That is completely understandable. Children are accustomed to the rituals and routines of school. In their school’s classrooms, they go to a specific environment that deliberately is structured for learning. Now for many children, those structures are different, and they are trying to understand what it means to learn more independently. Based on our research at Berry Street Education Model (BSEM), stress can negatively impact a child’s stamina to learn and their ability to focus. Managing this change as parents, carers and teachers can be overwhelming. Here are three strategies that we hope will help:

Scaffolding Learning with Rich Tasks: Curriculum Design

During Covid-19, teachers are designing curriculum that students might complete either at home or onsite at school. Based on our research and strategies at the Berry Street Education Model (BSEM), we would like to offer suggestions to bolster your instructional planning. We recommend that teachers design rich tasks for your young people to do at home, rather than sending through smaller tasks. We do not want to overwhelm students or their parents with the need to manage too many things at once.

Remember many parents are working from home so they may have limited time and energy to support their child’s learning, and many teachers working from home might be juggling caring responsibilities as well, so let’s keep our expectations of each other and ourselves reasonable!

Co-regulating (online) classrooms during a crisis

Teachers are quickly shifting to online learning environments in response to the COVID-19 crisis and the demands of social distancing.

During this crisis, stress levels are heightened for all of us. Trauma-impacted students, and in fact everyone, are susceptible to resurfacing trauma-related reactivity due to the compounding uncertainty and unpredictability this crisis presents. It is essential that schools prioritise student and teacher wellbeing and respond to the impacts of collective trauma and toxic stress.

Teaching self-regulation in early childhood

Have you ever had a day when your young students just seem to rev each other up and your centre or classroom is at fever-pitch? Or maybe you feel like your students are having constant meltdowns? Perhaps you feel that every time you look around you’re having to intervene to stop children from hurting each other. What can you do to teach them self-regulation strategies? The answer might be a surprise. When dealing with heightened students, we don’t start with them, we start with YOU!

Supporting Our Communities

It is hard to reconcile the massive fires that have raged throughout these school holidays. It has been a deeply concerning start to our bushfire season and our thoughts are with all of those who have been affected. The overall cost to our community is still yet unknown. What we do know is that the psychological impact of the trauma will be far reaching.

Mapping School Improvement with the Berry Street Education Model

This article considers how BSEM can be ‘the link’ that allows particular frameworks and programs to work in harmony and achieve a school’s teaching and learning goals over the long term. We hope that it will assist teachers and school leaders when formulating their whole school strategic planning and their annual implementation planning.

Stories of Impact – Christie Downs Primary School

Interview by Jack Greig, Senior Trainer of the Berry Street Education Model

Located south of Adelaide, Christie Downs Primary School is an inclusive site of 280 students. Christie Downs Primary School seeks to provide a supportive and nurturing environment in which students are able to learn, play and grow together for a successful future. The school’s values embody personal responsibility, respectful relationships and teamwork.

In this interview, Gail Evans, Principal of Christie Downs, reflects on what makes a compassionate educator and how schools can create a culture of self-development, acceptance and constant learning.

How Can You Help Students Stay on Task for Longer?

By Maddie Witter, education consultant and author of Reading Without Limits: Teaching Strategies to Build Independent Reading for Life

Anyone can improve their concentration stamina – from a wiggly toddler to a daydreaming university student. It’s a necessary, lifelong skill for success.

In a school context, teachers can help students learn to concentrate and sit still for longer by consistently including a daily independent reading block at school. Building independent reading is one way a school can effectively build concentration stamina. This stamina leads to significant gains in student literacy achievement and should be coupled with a robust literacy program. It also develops students’ thinking muscles so they can persevere and concentrate in other contexts.