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With the information found in this newsletter, you will be able to help students:
Use self-awareness and self-monitoring skills to help them understand their strengths and needs, take responsibility for their actions, recognize sources of stress, and monitor their own progress, as they participate in physical activities, develop movement competence, and acquire knowledge and skills related to healthy living (Personal Skills, grades 1-8)
Use adaptive, management, and coping skills to help them respond to the various challenges they encounter as they participate in physical activities, develop movement competence, and acquire knowledge and skills related to healthy living (Personal Skills, grades 1-8)
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How Can You Promote Student Mental Health Each and Every Day in Your Classroom?
- Provide opportunities for students to feel COMPETENT
- Involve students in decision-making to foster AUTONOMY
- Enable students to build CONNECTIONS / RELATIONSHIPS with others (peers, staff, family, community)
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Feelings Flashcards:
- Have students cut photos out of magazines (or snap photos of students making faces) that show different emotions.
- You can write the name of the emotion and what it feels like on the back and use as flash cards.
- You can also use the images to create a chart.
- Post chart in the classroom and refer to it as necessary.
Feelings pictures:
- Have students draw pictures in response to the following prompts. Post pictures and refer to them when necessary:
- Sometimes I feel happy because…
- Sometimes I feel sad because…
- When I am sad, this makes me feel better …
Feeling Better: Skits
- After a class discussion on coping skills, provide small groups of students with a scenario. In it, they can feel sad, angry or stressed for a variety of reasons.
- Next, have students create and perform a skit where they find a healthy way to feel better.
- Rehearse and share with the class.
Create a comic strip that shows your character coping in a stressful situation.
Create a ‘Good Sport’ wall in the classroom, using student-generated work to show ways that we can be ‘good sports’ and ‘good citizens’ in school, the community and on the playing field.
Develop ‘I need a break’ kits in your classroom.
- If students are having difficulty transitioning to a new activity, they can take a kit and use the activities in it to help them regulate their feeling and emotions.
- They can return to the group when they are calm and ready to learn.
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Have you Heard about Mindfulness?
Mindfulness involves focusing your awareness on the present moment. It aims to help people calmly acknowledge and accept their feelings, thoughts and emotions without judgement.
Here are three ways to help students develop mindfulness:
- Ring a Mindfulness Bell. Encourage students to sit quietly and listen to the sound of the bell, gently bringing their awareness back to the sound if it wanders. This can help focus the group when you’re introducing something new.
- Cooked Spaghetti. Have students lie on the floor and pretend to be an uncooked spaghetti noodle. Encourage them to make their muscles stiff and tense. Next ask them to pretend to be a cooked spaghetti noodle, making their muscles soft and squishy. Go back and forth between the two states a few times, discussing how our muscles are like uncooked noodles when we feel stress. They can practice getting the stress out of their bodies by turning their muscles into cooked spaghetti.
- Mindful Breathing: Have students lie on floor and place hands on their belly. As they breathe in, ask them to picture the air flowing into their belly and watch as their belly inflates and their hands move up. Then, as they exhale observe their belly deflating and their hands moving down. Explain that breathing is a powerful strategy to relieve stress and anger, and calm the mind and body.
Students can also try starfish breathing. Make a starfish with one hand (five fingers spread out wide) and gently trace the outline of a starfish using the pointer finger from your opposite hand while breathing in and out (see image below).
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Resources to Sign Out or Order
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The resources below are available for teachers to sign-out or order from the Perth District Health Unit. To order, email: schoolhealth@pdhu.on.ca
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Printed Resources Available to Order
These resources can be posted in your classroom or sent home to be shared with families.
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Curriculum Kits Available to Borrow
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Apps for Positive Mental Health
New information, news, funding opportunities, etc.
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Useful Websites with Lesson Material
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How safe and healthy is your school?
Be a part of a Healthy School Committee to find out!
A Healthy School Committee:
- looks at the big picture - what your school is doing well to promote student and staff safety and where are the areas for improvement.
- can effect meaningful change to the physical and social environments of your school
- members include parents, staff and students, with support from the Health Unit.
Contact the PDHU School Health Liaison at 519-271-7600 ext 301 or schoolhealth@pdhu.on.ca for more information on how to start or get support for your Healthy School Committee
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The Perth District Health Unit wants to make delivering quality health education a positive experience for elementary school teachers. We strive to support teachers by providing relevant, curriculum-related material on a monthly basis.
We welcome your feedback! Please send any comments and suggestions to: schoolhealth@pdhu.on.ca
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