What is 'Zones of Regulation?'

Learning

Zones of Regulation

Zones of Regulation at Tower Hill Primary School

 

At Tower Hill Primary School, we believe it is important to promote positive mental health and emotional wellbeing with our children. We have implemented Zones of Regulation in order to help our children understand, recognise and be able to regulate their emotions. By implementing the Zones of Regulation curriculum we aim to teach our pupils to identify emotions in themselves and others and provide them with a bank of strategies to help regulate their emotions and improve their wellbeing. The Zones of Regulation is a range of activities to help your child develop skills and strategies in the area of self-regulation. 

 

The Zones of Regulation is  centred around the use of four colours (red, green, blue and yellow) to help children identify how they are feeling and to categorise it based on these colours. Through learning about the Zones and undertaking the activities, we hope the children will learn to better understand their emotions and sensory needs. The children will learn different strategies to cope with and manage their emotions.

 

The activities that the children will take part in will depend on the age of the children. The children in Early Years will begin by learning to identify different emotions whilst the children in Key Stage 2 will learn how our behaviour can impact upon the feelings of those around us.

 

 

How can you support your child at home?
 
 
There are small things that you can do with your child at home to complement the work they are doing in school: 
  • Ask your child throughout the day "What zone are you in?", "How do you feel?". "Why are you in the _____ Zone?"
  • Discuss what emotion they feel in each zone e.g. in the yellow zone I may feel worried - you can use the pictures of the school displays to help them identify which colour zone they are in.
  • Discuss how they physically feel e.g. in yellow zone I may have butterflies in my stomach or have sweaty palms (if feeling anxious).
  • Discuss what their actions might be e.g. in yellow zone would they be pacing around, snapping at others, fidgeting?
  • Discuss how to help them move into the Green zone e.g. if I was in the Yellow zone and feeling anxious, I might find competing some yoga stretches/ breathing techniques helps me get back into the green zone.
  • Create a list of strategies that work for your child- Remind your child that we are all unique and the strategies that work for one person might not help them so they need to think about what would help them.
  • Model how you are feeling to them eg: "I am feeling _______ because you are not listening carefully to instructions. "

 

Remind them that we will experience all zones and there are no good or bad zones- however our success in regulating our emotions depends on us recognising our emotion, understanding it and putting a support strategy in place.

 

 

Why is Self-regulation important?
 
"Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it. 
 
                                                                                                      Charles Swindoll
 
Research has found that higher academic achievement is more likely when interventions include self-regulation. 
 
Typically, children who can self-regulate will turn into teens who can self-regulate. 
 
A person who can self-regulate is able to: 
  • remain calm and organised in a stressful situation
  • cheer themselves up after a disappointment
  • knows when they are experiencing sensory overload and can make adjustments
  • understands when it is appropriate to cheer and shout and when to be quiet