If you feel like you know far more than you ever needed to about the price of Brent crude and shipping movements through the Hormuz strait bearing the fuel that keeps things moving, it might be a fair assumption that some of your students are feeling the same way.
In many households, conversations are revolving around topics like transport options, e bikes and scooters, catching public transport in winter and the cost of groceries.
This can have an impact on students as well as the adults in their world, and the ongoing emotional turmoil and resulting behaviour changes may start to creep its way into a classroom near you soon.
Before it does, here are five handy strategies to settle the storm and make your classroom a place of calm:
Establish support routines
Routines matter for young people. We know this. Routines help settle and give a quiet, unspoken message that things are like they were yesterday.
Calendars, wall charts, visual schedules and timetables that make sense to everyone are great for helping students remember and engage with their routine. It encourages them to be independent whilst also supporting students for whom routine is a crucial part of their day.
Fire up creativity
While it might seem like the polar opposite to routines in the classroom, a burst of creative expression is another handy tool for calming and reassuring.
Creative activities where students can express their ideas and emotions and use their hands to create, build and construct are great to include in your weekly plan.
Working with clay, creating a diorama, designing a poster or composing a piece of music can all work towards learning outcomes whilst also allowing time for immersing in an activity that takes full attention and focus.
Busy hands
Try including some activities that allow students to keep their hands busy, such as completing a puzzle, learning a new craft, using a mindfulness colouring page or playing a sport.
When students have their hands busy and occupied, they are less likely to spend time on screens. It’s much easier to redirect students to a busy hands activity than to constantly be reminding them that they should not be on their screens.
Sensory toys and tools
For some students, time spent using sensory toys and tools can help restore calm and balance. Squeezy toys, fidgets, pipe cleaner twists, key rings with beads or glitter jars can all be useful for students who do best with sensory input.
You can include sensory toys and tools in a basket or tub in the container, or encourage students to keep their own at their table.
Active bodies
Sometimes sensory input needs to involve the larger muscles of the body, with lots of deep pressure, stronger tactile input and big movements.
For students who like to move, its important to offer lots of opportunities each day to do so.
Remember that one person’s yoga to music is another person’s basketball game, so avoid the temptation to limit what your students can do to help them reset and find balance in their day.
This could look like having a mini trampoline in the corner of the room, setting aside regular movement breaks outside, including physical tasks to meet academic learning outcomes or including a quick dance session before a recess or lunch break.
Developing strategies to help students find calm in challenging situations is not easy.
What matters is being ready to support and guide when things are rocky, and understanding that behaviour is always telling us something – we just need to work out what it is.
